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niOAI VS f VRI\LE 

From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry, 



THOMAS OARLYLE 



BY 



MOlSrCUEE D; CONWAY 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 



^no<^ 




a 






Copyright, 1881, by Harper & Brothers. 



Copyright, 1909, by Mildred Conway Sawyer and Eustace Conway. 



All rights reserved. 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

APR 2 1^09 

^ Copyriffnt fcntry 

CLASS oj ^^^ No. 
COPY Q. 






PREFACE. 



Early in the year 1863, when I first visited Eng- 
land, Emerson gave me a letter of introduction to 
Thomas Carljle, which at once secured for me a gra- 
cious reception and kindly entertainment from the 
author and his wife at Chelsea. It was their custom 
to receive their friends in the evening, and I was 
invited to join their circle as often as it might be 
convenient to me. As time went on, this evening 
circle at Carlyle's became smaller, and many a time 
I was the only guest present. I was also invited by 
Carlyle to share his walks, after he had given np the 
horseback exercise he used to take. These afternoon 
walks were long, generally through Kensington Gar- 
dens, Hyde Park, and even into Piccadilly. I was 
careful never to interrupt his hours of literary labor, 
and always to obey Mrs. Carlyle's kindly intimations 
as to his habits and exigencies. My relations with 
the memorable home at Chelsea were always, and to 



VI PEEFACE. 

the last, very pleasant, never marred by any incident 
or word to be thought of now with regret. 

This little book which I now send out to the world 
was veritably written by Carlyle himself. However 
inadequately transcribed and conveyed, these pages 
do faithfully follow impressions made by his own 
word and spirit upon my mind during an intercourse 
of many years. Nothing has been imported into 
them from other publications which have appeared 
since his death. The letters of Carlyle, and that 
' charming one written by Emerson just after his first 
visit to him which is added to them, have been in- 
trusted to me by my friend Alexander Ireland — au- 
thor of an excellent bibliographical work on the 
writings of Hazlitt, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt — the 
valued friend of both Carlyle and Emerson. The 
suppressions indicated in those letters are of matters 
properly private — as, indeed, are various withheld 
notes of my own — and not things omitted with any 
theoretical purpose. 

I have written out my notes and my memories 
with the man still vividly before me, and, as it were, 
still speaking ; and, I must venture to add, it is a 
man I can by no means identify with any image that 
can be built up out of his " Eeminiscences." I 
do not wish to idealize Carlyle, but cannot admit 



PEEFACE. Vll 

that the outcries of a broken heart should be ac- 
cepted as the man's true voice, or that measurements 
of men and memories as seen through burning tears 
should be recorded as characteristic of his heart or 
judgment. This sketch of mine is written and pub- 
lished in loyalty to the memory of those two at 
Chelsea whom, amid whatever differences of con- 
viction, I honored and loved. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGB 

Thomas Carlyle — from a Photograph by Elliott 

AND Fry, London Frontispiece 

Birthplace OF Thomas Carlyle . . . . To face 16 

Carlyle's Mother 29 

Fac-simile of Carlyle's Handwriting . To face 46 
Choir of Abbey Church, Haddington, Mrs. Car- 
lyle's Grave in the Foreground . . To face 54 
Room in which Carlyle was Born . . " 138 

Craigenputtoch " 140 

Mrs. Thomas Carlyle " 142 

Early Portrait of Thomas Carlyle , . " 152 



Part I. 
THOMAS CAKLYLE 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



I. 

The real record of Carljle's life will be a long 
task, employing not only many human hands, but 
even the hand of Time itself. 

While writing his "History of Friedrich II.," 
Carlyle had prepared — as, indeed, the growth of the 
work had demanded — a special study at the top of 
his house in Chelsea, in which only that paper, book, 
or picture was admitted which was in some way con- 
nected with the subject in hand. One side of the 
room was covered from floor to ceiling with books ; 
two others were adorned with pictures of persons or 
battles; and through these books and pictures was 
distributed the man he was trying to put together 
in comprehensible shape. But even more widely 
was Carlyle himself distributed. In what part of 
the earth have not his lines gone out and his labors 
extended ? On how many hearts and minds, on how 
many lives, has he engraved passages whieh are 



14: THOMAS CAELYLE. 

transcripts of his own life, without which it can 
never be fullj told? To report this one life, pre- 
cious contributions must be brought from the lives 
of Goethe, Emerson, Jeffrey, Brewster, Sterling, 
Leigh Hunt, Mill, Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, Harriet 
Martineau, Faraday. But how go on with the long 
catalogue ? At its end, could that be reached, there 
would remain the equally important memories of 
lives less known, from which in the future may 
come incidents casting fresh light upon this central 
figure of two generations ; and, were all told, time 
alone can bring the perspective through which his 
genius and character can be estimated. In one 
sense, Carlyle was as a city set upon a hill, that can- 
not be hid; in another, he was an "open secret," 
hid by the very simplicity of his unconscious dis- 
guises, the frank perversities whose meaning could 
be known only by those close enough to hear the 
heart-beat beneath them ; and many who have fan- 
cied that they had him rightly labelled with some 
moody utterance, or safely pigeon-holed in some out- 
break of a soul acquainted with grief, will be found 
to have measured the oak by its mistletoe. 

Those who have listened to the wonderful conver- 
sation of Carlyle know well its impressiveness and 
its charm : the sympathetic voice now softening to 
the very gentlest, tenderest tone as it searched far 
into some sad life, little known or regarded, or 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 15 

perhaps evil spoken of, and found there traits 
to be admired, or signs of nobleness, — then rising 
through all melodies in rehearsing the deeds of he- 
roes; anon breaking out with illumined thunders 
against some special baseness or falsehood, till one 
trembled before the Sinai smoke and flame, and 
seemed to hear the tables break once more in his 
heart : all these, accompanied by the mounting, fad- 
ing fires in his cheek, the light of the eye, now se- 
rene as heaven's blue, now flashing with wrath, or 
presently suffused with laughter, made the outer 
symbols of a genius so unique that to me it had 
been unimaginable had I not known its presence 
and power. His conversation was a spell; when I 
had listened and gone into the darkness, the enchant- 
ment continued; sometimes I could not sleep till 
the vivid thoughts and narratives were noted in 
writing. It is mainly from these records of conver- 
sations that the following pages are written out, with 
addition of some other materials obtained by per- 
sonal inquiries made in Scotland and in London. I 
realized many jesLVS ago that my notes contained 
matter that might some day be useful, especially to 
my American countrymen, in forming a just esti- 
mate and judgment of one whose expressions were 
often unwelcome ; and this conviction has made me 
increasingly careful, as the years went on, to remark 
any variations of his views, and his responses to crit- 



16 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

icisms made so frequently upon statements of his 
which had been resented. I do not in the least 
modify, nor shall I set forth these things in such 
order or relation as to illustrate any theory of my 
own. He who spoke his mind through life must so 
speak on, though he be dead. 

II. 

Thomas Carlyle was born on the 4:th of Decem- 
ber, 1795, at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. The small 
stone house still stands. It was a favorite saying 
of his that great men are not born among fools. 
"There was Eobert Burns," he said one day; "I 
used often to hear from old people in Scotland of 
the good sense and wise conversation around that 
little fireside where Burns listened as a child. Not- 
ably there was a man named Murdoch who remem- 
bered all that ; and I have the like impression about 
the early life of most of the notable men and women 
I have heard or read of. When a great soul rises 
up, it is generally in a place where there has been 
much hidden worth and intelligence at work for a 
long time. The vein runs on, as it were, beneath 
the surface for a generation or so, then bursts into 
the light in some man of genius, and oftenest that 
seems to be the end of it." Carlyle was thinking of 
other persons than himself, but there are few lives 
that could better point his thought. I^othing could 




BIRTHPLACE OF THOMAS CARLVLE. 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 17 

be more incongruous with the man and his life than 
the attempt once made to get up a Carljle "pedi- 
gree." 

But the vigor of the lowly stock was proved by 
the strong individuality it steadily developed, and 
in none more notably than the father of Thomas. 
The humble stone-mason certainly "builded better 
than he knew," though he lived long enough to hear 
his son's name pronounced with honor throughout 
the kingdom. An aged Scotch minister who knew 
him well told me that old James Carlyle was " a 
character." " Earnest, energetic, of quick intellect, 
and in earlier life somewhat passionate and pugna- 
cious, he was not just the man to be popular among 
his rustic neighbors of Annandale ; but they respect- 
ed his pronounced individuality, felt his strong will, 
and his terse, epigrammatic sayings were remem- 
bered and repeated many years after his death 
(1832). In the later years of his life he became a 
more decidedly religious character, and the natural 
asperities of his character and manner were much 
softened." 

Mr. James Routledge, in an Indian periodical, 
Mooherjee^s Magazine, October, 1872, says : 

"I was interested enough in Mr. Carlyle the 
younger to make a special tour, some years ago, to 
learn something of Mr. Carlyle the elder ; and from 
what I gathered the reader may be pleased with a 



18 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

few scraps, as characteristic of the school of ^ Sartor 
Resartus.' Mr. Carlyle's landlord was one General 
Sharpe, of whom little is now known, though he was 
a great man in those days. On one occasion James 
Carljle and he had a quarrel, and James was heard 
to say, in a voice of thunder, ' I tell thee what, Mat- 
thew Sharpe' — a mode of salutation that doubtless 
astonished General Sharpe; but it was 'old James 
Carlyle's way,' and was not to be altered for any 
General in existence. There was much in the old 
man's manner of speaking that never failed to at- 
tract attention. A gentleman resident in the local- 
ity told me that he remembered meeting him one 
very stormy day, and saying, ' Here's a fearful day, 
James ;' which drew forth the response, ' Man, it's a' 
that; it's roaring doon our glen like the cannon o' 
Quebec' My informant added, ' I never could for- 
get that sentence.' James had also a wondrous pow- 
er of fixing upon characteristic names for all man- 
ner of persons, and nailing his names to the individ- 
uals for life. Samuel Johnson was ' Surly Sam,' and 
so on — a gift which has come among us in a more 
livable form from the pen of his son. Mr. Carlyle 
was a stern Presbyterian — a Burgher; held no terms 
with prelacy or any other ungodly offshoot from the 
Woman of Babylon, but clung to the ' auld Buke,' 
without note or comment, as his only guide to heav- 
en. He was one of the elders of his church when 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 19 

its pastor, having received a call from a church 
where his stipend would be better than that of Ec- 
clefechan, applied for leave to remove. The church 
met, and lamentation was made for the irreparable 
loss. After much nonsense had been spoken, Mr. 
Carlyle's opinion was asked. ' Pay the hireling his 
wages and let him go,' said the old man ; and it was 
done. Mr. Carljle had a thorough contempt for 
any one who said, ^I can't.' * Impossible' was not 
in his vocabulary. Once, during harvest -time, he 
was taken seriously ill. l^o going to the field, Mr. 
Carlyle, for weeks to come: water- gruel, doctor's 
bottles, visiting parson, special prayers — poor old 
James Carlyle ! Pshaw ! James was found crawling 
to the field early next morning, but still an idler 
among workers. He looked at the corn, provoking- 
ly ripe for the sickle ; and then, stamping his foot 
fiercely to the ground, he said, * I'll gar mysel' work 
at t' harvest.' And he did work at it like a man. 
On one occasion a reverend gentleman had been fa- 
voring the congregation of Mr. Carlyle's church with 
a terrible description of the last judgment. James 
listened to him calmly ; but when the sermon was 
finished, he came out of his pew, and, placing him- 
self before the reverend gentleman and all the con- 
gregation, he said, aloud, 'Ay, ye may thump and 
stare till yer een start frae their sockets, but you'll 
na gar me believe such stuff as that.' 



20 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

" If the reader will now go back with me to those 
days, and view for a few minutes the little farm at 
Mainhill, after the fair, honest, and well-earned hours 
of evening rest have fully arrived, we shall, in all 
probability, find Mr. Carlyle reading from the Bible 
— not for fashion's sake, not to be seen and praised by 
men, but for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
in righteousness ; and his children will be listening, 
as children should. Refused his proper place in so- 
ciety for want of learning, we shall see this brave 
old man doing the next best thing to moulding the 
age — training his children to do that which he felt a 
power within him capable of performing, but for 
which the means — the mechanical means, the verb 
and pronoun kind of thing — were denied. Such was 
the father, and such the earliest school of Thomas 
Carlyle." 

Of the many anecdotes told of this elder Carlyle, 
one seems to be characteristic not only of the man, 
but of the outer environment amid which Thomas 
passed his earlier life. On the occasion of a mar- 
riage of one of the sons, the younger members of the 
household proposed that a coat of paint should be 
given the house ; but the old man resisted this scheme 
for covering the plain walls with the varnish of false- 
hood. An attempt was made by the majority to set 
aside his will, but, unfortunately, old Mr. Carlyle was 
at home when the painters arrived, and planting him- 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 21 

self in the doorway, demanded what they wanted. 
They replied that they " cam' tae pent the house." 
"Then," returned the old man, "ye can jist slent 
the bog wP yer ash-baket feet, for ye'll pit nana o' 
yer glaur on ma door." The painters needed no 
translation of this remark, and "slent the bog" — i. e., 
went their ways. Paint to the sturdy old stone- 
mason meant simply so much slime; for it would 
appear that the Latin clara and French glaire are 
represented in Scotland by darts and glaur — equiv- 
alents for mud, and more appropriately used for 
mud of a viscous character. I have sometimes 
thought that if the father had been able to admit 
those house-painters, the son's destiny might have 
been different. His dislike of rhyme and poetic 
measures, after showing that he could excel in the 
same, and all literary architecture, had in it an echo 
of that paternal horror of "glaur." He scented a 
falsehood from afar. Some one spoke of " England's 
prestigeP " Do you remember what prestige means?" 
asked he, sharply : " it is the Latin word for a lie." 

As James Carlyle acquired more means he added 
to the small house in Ecclefechan a further building, 
which now stands behind the other in what is still 
called " Carlyle's Close." Afterwards he took to 
farming, and became the possessor of the neighbor- 
ing farm and homestead of over two hundred acres, 
called Scotsbrig. For some years previously he had 



22 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

become more of an architect than a stone-mason. 
The stone-mason's craft often furnished Carlyle 
with his metaphors, and he always had a special 
horror of architectural shams. Once as we were 
walking together he remarked the flimsiness of some 
house- walls just going up. "Every brick in them 
is a lie. A necessary part, I suppose, of the superla- 
tive ugliness of so many people crowding together. 
The cities are all cabbaging out in this way. The 
house I live in (at Chelsea) was built by honest men. 
The brick and mortar have hardened together with 
time, and made a wall which is one solid stone, and 
it will stand there till Gabriel's trump blows it 
down." 

III. 

In order to introduce here, as well as my notes 
and memory enable me, some of Carlyle's own ram- 
bling reminiscences of those who were the presiding 
destinies of his early life, it will be necessary to pass 
to a comparatively recent period, and attend him to 
an eminence in his life from which those young 
years were beheld in natural perspective. And my 
reader must pardon me for now and then turning 
into a by-way on our road. 

It was in the evening of the day when Carlyle was 
inaugurated Lord Eector of Edinburgh University 
that he himself told me most fully the story of his 
early life, and of his struggles in that ancient city 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 23 

which had now decorated itself in his honor. That 
day was the culmination of his personal history. IsTo 
pen has yet described the events of that day, and the 
main fact of it, in their significance or picturesque- 
ness. E^or can that be wondered at ; the background 
against which they stood out were the weary trials, 
the long unwatched studies, the poverty and want, 
amid which the little boy of fourteen began to climb 
the rugged path which ended on this height. When 
on that bright day (the 2d of April, 1866) Carlyle 
entered the theatre in Edinburgh, the scene was one 
for which no memory of the old university could 
have prepared him. Beside him walked the venera- 
ble Sir David Brewster, fourteen years his senior, 
who first recognized his ability, and first gave him 
literary work to do. The one now Principal, the 
other Lord Hector, they walked forward in their 
gold-laced robes of ofiice, while the professors, the 
students, the ladies, stood up, cheering, waving their 
hats, books, handkerchiefs, as if some wild ecstasy 
were sweeping over the assembly. "Who were these 
around him ? The old man sat and scanned for a 
little the faces before him. His eye alights on Hux- 
ley, and not far away is the face of his friend Tyn- 
dall, all sunshine. Another and another face from 
London, a score of aged faces that bring up memo- 
ries from this and that quiet retreat of Scotland, and 
the occasion begins to weave its potent influences 



24 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

around the man who had never faced audience since, 
some twenty-six years before, he had celebrated " He- 
roes," and among them some less heroic than this 
new Lord Eector. On that last occasion, in the Ed- 
wards Street Institute, London, Carlyle brought a 
manuscript, and found it much in his way. On the 
next evening he brought some notes, but ihese also 
tripped him up, till he left them. The rest of the 
lectures were given without a note, simply like his 
conversation, and they required very little alteration 
when they came to be printed. For this Edinburgh 
occasion, also, Carlyle at first thought of writing 
something; he made out some headings and a few 
notes, and carried them in his pocket to the theatre, 
but he did not look at them. 

What that address really was no one can imagine 
who has only read it. Throughout, it was phenom- 
enal, like some spiritualized play of the elements. 
Ere he began, Carlyle, much to the amusement of 
the students, shook himself free of the gold -laced 
gown ; but it was not many minutes before he had 
laid aside various other conventionalities : the grand 
sincerity, the drolleries, the auroral flashes of mysti- 
cal intimation, the lightnings of scorn for things low 
and base — all of these severally taking on physiog- 
nomical expression in word, tone, movement of the 
head, color of the face, really seemed to bring before 
us a being whose physical form was purely a trans- 
parency of thought and feeling. 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 25 

What a figure stood tliere before us ! The form, 
stately though slender and somewhat bent, conveyed 
the impression of a powerful organization ; the head, 
well curved and long, moving but rarely from side 
to side, then slowly ; the limbs, never fidgety, but- 
tressing, like quaint architecture, the lofty head and 
front of the man : these characters at once made 
their impression. But presently other and more 
subtle characteristics came out on the face and form 
before tis, those which time and fate, thought aiid 
experience, had added to the man which nature had 
given them. The rugged brow, softened by the 
silvered hair, had its inscriptions left by the long 
years of meditation and of spiritual sorrow; the 
delicate mouth, whose satire was sympathetic, never 
curling the lip nor sinking to sarcasm ; the blond 
face, with its floating colors of sensibility, and the 
large luminous eye — these made the outer image of 
Carlyle as he stood and spake, when even the gray- 
haired were gathered at his feet, listening like chil- 
dren held by a tale of Wonderland. 

When Carlyle sat down there was an audible 
sound, as of breath long held, by all present ; then a 
cry from the students, an exultation ; they rose up, 
all arose, waving their arms excitedly ; some pressed 
forward, as if wishing to embrace him, or to clasp 
his knees; others were weeping: what had been 

heard that day was more than could be reported ; it 

2 



26 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

was the ineffable spirit that went forth from the 
deeps of a great heart and from the ages stored up 
in it, and deep answered unto deep. 

When, after the address, Carljle came out to the 
door, a stately carriage was waiting to take him to 
the house of Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, but he beg- 
ged to be allowed to walk. He had no notion, how- 
ever, what that involved. 'No sooner did the de- 
lighted crowd, or friendly mob, discover that the 
Lord Rector was setting out to walk through the 
street than they extemporized a procession, and fol- 
lowed him, several hundred strong, with such clam- 
orous glorification that he found it best to take a 
cab. As he did so, he turned and gave the rather 
ragged part of the crowd a steady, compassionate 
look, and said, softly, as if to himself, " Poor fellows ! 
poor fellows !" 

During the dinner that evening, at which Mr. 
Erskine entertained Lord J^eaves, Dr. John Brown, 
and other Edinburgh celebrities, Carlyle was very 
happy, and conversed in the finest humor; he en- 
lightened us, as I remember, about antiquarian words 
and names; as that % meant town, and hy-laws 
town-laws ; wick meant the corner of the mouth, such 
names as Berwick being given to places on creeks 
so shaped; glead meant hawk, and Gladstone was 
Hawkstone, and so on. When the ladies had retired, 
Carlyle asked me to go with him to his room in order 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 27 

to consult a little about the revision of his address for 
tlie press. This being arranged for, he lit his pipe 
and fell into a long, deep silence. In the reverie 
every furrow passed away from his face ; all anxie- 
ties seemed far away. I saw his countenance as I 
had never seen it before — without any trace of spir- 
itual pain. The pathetic expression was overlaid by 
a sort of quiet gladness — like the soft evening glow 
under which the Profile on the l^ew England moun- 
tain appears to smile ; there fell on this great jutting 
brow and grave face, whose very laughter was often 
volcanic as its wrath, a sweet childlike look. He 
was, indeed, thinking of his childhood. 

" It seems very strange," he said, " as I look back 
over it all now — so far away — and the faces that 
grew aged, and then vanished. A greater debt I 
owe to my father than he lived long enough to have 
fully paid to him. He was a very thoughtful and 
earnest kind of man, even to sternness. He was 
fond of reading, too, particularly the reading of the- 
ology. Old John Owen, of the seventeenth century, 
was his favorite author. He could not tolerate any- 
thing fictitious in books, and sternly forbade ns to 
spend our time over the * Arabian E'ights' — * those 
downright lies,' he called them. He was grimly re- 
ligious. I remember him going into the kitchen, 
where some servants were dancing, and reminding 
them very emphatically that they were dancing on 



28 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

the verge of a place wliich no politeness ever pre- 
vented his mentioning on fit occasion. He himself 
walked as a man in the full presence of heaven and 
hell and the day of judgment. They were always 
imminent. One evening, some people were playing 
cards in the kitchen when the bake-house caught 
lire ; the events were to him as cause and effect, and 
henceforth there was a flaming handwriting on our 
walls against all cards. All of which was the hard 
outside of a genuine veracity and earnestness of 
nature such as I have not found so common among 
men as to think of them in him without respect. 

"My mother stands in my memory as beautiful 
in all that makes the excellence of woman. Pious 
and gentle she was, with an unweariable devotedness 
to her family ; a loftiness of moral aim and religious 
conviction which gave her presence and her humble 
home a certain graciousness, and, even as I see it 
now, dignity ; and with it, too, a good deal of wit 
and originality of mind. !No man ever had better 
opportunities than I for comprehending, were they 
comprehensible, the great dee23S of a mother's love 
for her children. Nearly my first profound impres- 
sions in this world are connected with the death of 
an infant sister — an event whose sorrowfulness was 
made kn*own to me in the inconsolable grief of my 
mother. For a long time she seemed to dissolve in 
tears — only tears. For several months not one night 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 



29 




carlyle's jMOTHEK. 



passed but slie dreamed of holding her babe in her 
arms, and clasping it to her breast. At length one 
morning she related a change in her dream : while 
she held the child in her arms it had seemed to break 
up into small fragments, and so crumbled away and 
vanished. From that night her vision of the babe 
and dream of clasping it never returned. 

" The only fault I can remember in my mother 
was her being too mild and peaceable for the planet 
she lived in. When I was sent to school, she piously 
enjoined on me that I should, under no conceivable 
circumstances, fight with any boy, nor resist any evil 
done to me; and her instructions were so solemn 



30 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

that for a long: time I was accustomed to submit to 
every kind of injustice, simply for her sake. It was 
a sad mistake. When it was practically discovered 
that I would not defend myself, every kind of indig- 
nity was put upon me, and my life was made utterly 
miserable. Fortunately the strain was too great. 
One day a big boy was annoying me, when it oc- 
curred to my mind that existence under such con- 
ditions was not supportable; so I slipped off my 
wooden clog, and therewith suddenly gave that boy 
a blow on the seat of honor w^hich sent him sprawl- 
ing on face and stomach in a convenient mass of 
mud and water. I shall never forget the burthen 
that rolled off me at that moment. I never had a 
more heart-felt satisfaction than in witnessing the 
consternation of that contemporary. It proved to 
be a measure of peace, also ; from that time I w^as 
troubled by the boys no more." 

Carlyle's mother died in 1853. Dr. John Car- 
lyle told me that although the subjects upon which 
Thomas wrote were to a large extent foreign to her, 
she read all of his works published up to the time of 
her death with the utmost care ; and his " History 
of the French Eevolution," particularly, she read 
and reread until she had comprehended it. With a 
critical acumen known only to mothers, she excepted 
" Wilhelm Meister" from her pious reprobation of 
novel-reading (not failing, however, to express de- 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 31 

cided opinions concerning the moral character of 
Philina and others). At first she was somewhat dis- 
turbed by the novel religions views encountered in 
these books, but she found her son steadfast and 
earnest, and cared for no more. I have heard that 
it was to her really inquiring mind that Carlyle 
owed his first questioning of the conventional Eng- 
lish opinion of the character of Cromwell. 

There was something indescribably touching and 
even thrilling in the tones of passionate longing with 
which Carlyle spoke of his parents. It was a Lord 
Rector talking about poor and comparatively igno- 
rant workpeople long dead, but there was a love in 
Carlyle passing the love of women : at that moment 
he would have flung to the winds all the honors 
which the world had heaped upon him for one more 
day in the old home at Scotsbrig with his father — 
one hour of the old nestling at the heart of his moth- 
er. So long as either of them lived, he (as I knew 
on good information) had been constant in his plead- 
ings for permission to contribute something to make 
their age happier; but they needed only his love, 
and they chose well — a treasure not measurable. 

"As I was compelled," continued Carlyle, "to 
quietly abandon my mother's non-resistant lessons, 
so I had to modify my father's rigid rulings against 
books of fiction. I remember few happier days 
than those in which I ran off into the fields to read 



32 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

* Roderick Eandom,' and liow inconsolable I was 
that I could not get the second volume. To this day 
I know of few writers equal to Smollett. Humphry 
Clinker is precious to me now as he was in those 
years. Nothing by Dante or any one else surpasses 
in pathos the scene where Humphry goes into the 
smithy made for him in the old house, and whilst 
he is heating the iron, the poor woman who has lost 
her husband, and is deranged, comes and talks to 
him as to her husband. 'John, they told me jou 
were dead. How glad I am you have come !' And 
Humphry's tears fall down and bubble on the hot 
iron. 

"Ah, well, it would be a long story. As with 
every 'studious boy' of that time and region, the 
destiny prepared for me was the nearly inevitable 
kirk. And so I came here to Edinburgh, about four- 
teen, and went to hard work. And still harder work 
it was when the University had been passed by, the 
hardest being to find work. I^early the only com- 
panion I had was poor Edward Irving, then one of 
the most attractive of youths ; we had been to the 
same Annan school, but he was three years my senior. 
Here, and for a long time after, destiny threw us a 
good deal together." 

(An old Scotch gentleman who knew the two in 
those Edinburgh years told me that both were vehe- 
mently argumentative ; also that though Carlyle was 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 33 

tlie better reasoner, Irving generally got the best of 
the argument, since he was apt to knock Carljle 
down with his fist when himself driven into logical 
distress. This was Immoronsly said, and no doubt a 
slight exaggeration of the facts.) 

" Yerj little help did I get from anybody in those 
years, and, as I may say, no sympathy at all in all this 
old town. And if there was any difference, it was 
found least where I might most have hoped for it. 

There was Professor . For years I attended his 

lectures, in all weathers and all hours. Many and 
many a time, when the class was called together, it 
was found to consist of one individual — to wit, of 
him now speaking; and still oftener, when others 
were present, the only person who had at all looked 
into the lesson assigned was the same humble indi- 
vidual. I remember no instance in which these facts 
elicited any note or comment from that instructor. 
He once requested me to translate a mathematical 
paper, and I worked through it the whole of one 
Sunday, and it was laid before him, and it was re- 
ceived without remark or thanks. After such long 
years I came to part with him, and to get my certifi- 
cate. Without a word, he wrote on a bit of paper: 
* I certify that Mr. Thomas Carlyle has been in my 
class during his college course, and has made good 
progress in his studies.' Then he rang a bell, and 

ordered a servant to open the front door for me. 

2^ 



34: THOMAS CAELTLE. 

ISTot the slightest sign that I was a person whom he 
could have distinguished in any crowd. And so I 
parted from old ." 

Carlyle's extraordinary attainments were clearly 
enough recognized by his fellow -students, among 
whom, no doubt, he might have found sympathetic 
friends had he been willing to spare time from the 
books he was devouring in such vast quantities. 
"When he had graduated, the professors began to 
realize that their best student had gone. For two 
years (1814:-16) he was mathematical teacher in the 
grammar-school at Annan, where he had been a pupil 
between 1806 and 1809. Then Professor Leslie, the 
coadjutor and afterwards the successor of Playfair, 
procured for him, as he had previously done for Ir- 
ving, a situation as teacher in the neighborhood. 

"It had become increasingly clear to me that I 
could not enter the ministry with any honesty of 
mind ; and nothing else then offering, to say notliing 
of the utter mental confusion as to what thing was 
desired, I went away to that lonely straggling town 
on the Frith of Forth, Kirkcaldy, possessing then, as 
still, few objects interesting to any one not engaged 
in the fishing profession. Two years there of her- 
mitage, loneliness, at the end of which something 
must be done. Back to Edinburgh, and for a time 
a small subsistence is obtained by teaching a few 
pupils, while the law is now the object aimed at. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 35 

Tlien came the dreariest years — eating of the heart, 
misgivings as to whether there shall be presently 
anything else to eat, disappointment of the nearest 
and dearest as to the hoped-for entrance on the min- 
istry, and steadily growing disappointment of self 
with the undertaken law profession — above all, per- 
haps, wanderings through mazes of doubt, perpetual 
questionings unanswered." 

" I had gradually become a devout reader in Ger- 
man literature, and even now began to feel a ca- 
pacity for work, but heard no voice calling for just 
the kind of work I felt capable of doing. The first 
break of gray light in this kind was brought by my 
old friend David Brewster. He set me to work 
on the "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia;" there was not 
much money in it, but a certain drill, and, still bet- 
ter, a sense of accomplishing something, though far 
yet from what I w^as aiming at ; as, indeed, it has 
always been far enough from ihatP 

I may recall here an occasion when Carlyle was 
speaking, in his stormy way, of the tendency of the 
age to spend itself in talk. Mrs. Carlyle (with her 
wonted tact, anticipating any possible suggestion of 
the same from^ome listener) said, archly, "And how 
about Mr. Carlyle V He paused some moments : the 
storm was over, and I almost fancied that for once I 
saw a tear gather in the old man's eyes as he said, in 
low" tone, " Mr. Carlyle looked long and anxiously to 



36 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

find something he could do with any kind of verac- 
ity : he found no door open save that he took, and 
had to take, though it was by no means what he 
would have selected." Once, too, when some vigor- 
ous person was praising a favorite poet, Carlyle spoke 
of the said poet as a " phrasemonger." The other, 
somewhat nettled, said, " But what are the best of 
us but phrasemongers !" Siegfried was never more 
conscious of the vulnerable point left by the leaf on 
his back than Carlyle of the distance between his 
doctrine of silence and his destiny of authorship. 
He bowed and said, "True;" and the conversation 
proceeded amiably enougli. 

Between the years 1820-24 Carlyle wrote for the 
"Edinburgh Encyclopaedia" sixteen articles — name- 
ly, Mary Wortley Montagu, Montaigne, Montesquieu, 
Montfaucon, Dr. Moore, Sir John Moore, Necker, 
Nelson, l^etherlands, IN^ewfoundland, ISTorfolk, !North- 
amptonshire, E"orthumberland, Mungo Park, Lord 
Chatham, "William Pitt. To the Wew Ediiibiirgh 
JRemeio^ in the same years, he contributed a paper 
on Joanna Baillie's " Metrical Legends," and one on 
Goethe's " Faust." In 1822 he made the translation 
of Legendre, and wrote the valuable essay on " Pro- 
portion" prefixed to it, though it did not appear un- 
til 1824. M. Louis Blanc informed me that he once 
met with a French treatise devoted to the discussion 
of the mathematical theses of Carlyle, the writer of 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 37 

which seemed unaware of his author's fame in other 
matters. 

" And now " (towards the close of his twenty-sev- 
enth year this would be) " things brightened a little. 
Edward Irving, then amid his worshippers in Lon- 
don, had made the acquaintance of a wealthy family, 
the Bullers, who had a son with whom all teachers 
had effected nothing. There were two boys, and he 
named me as likely to succeed with them. It was in 
■this way that I came to take charge of Charles Buller 
— afterwards ray dear friend, Thackeray's friend also 
— and I gradually managed to get him ready for 
Cambridge. Charles and I came to love each otlier 
dearly, and we all saw him with pride steadily rising 
in Parliamentary distinction, when he died. Poor 
Charles! he was one of the finest youths I ever 
knew. The engagement ended without regret, but 
while it lasted was the means of placing me in cir- 
cumstances of pecuniary comfort beyond what I had 
previously known, and of thus giving me the means 
of doing more congenial work, such as the ^Life 
of Schiller,' and 'Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre.' 
But one gaunt form had been brought to my side by 
the strain through which I had passed, who was not 
in a hurry to quit — ill-health. The reviewers were 
not able to make much of Wilhelm. De Quincey 
and Jeffrey looked hard at us. I presently met De 
Quincey, and he looked pale and uneasy, possibly 



38 THOMAS nAELYLE. 

thinking that he was about to encounter some re- 
sentment from the individual whom he had been 
cutting up. But it had made the very smallest im- 
pression upon me, and I w^as quite prepared to listen 
respectfully to anything he had to say. And, as I 
remember, he made himself quite agreeable when his 
nervousness was gone. He had a melodious voice 
and an affable manner, and his powers of conversa- 
tion were unusual. He had a soft, courteous way of 
taking up what you had said, and furthering it ap- 
parently; and you presently discovered that he didn't 
agree with you at all, and was quietly upsetting your 
positions one after another." 

The review of " Wilhelm Meister" by Jeffrey, just 
mentioned, w^as one of the notable literary events of 
the time. Beginning his task with the foregone 
conclusion that prevailed at Holland House concern- 
ing all importations from Germany, even before they 
were visible, Jeffrey pronounced "Wilhelm Meister" 
to be " eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, and 
affected," "almost from beginning to end one flagrant 
offence against every principle of taste and every 
rule of composition." Unfortunately, this was pre- 
ceded by the statement that the judgment was made 
" after the most deliberate consideration ;" for in the 
latter part of the review the writer is compelled to 
regard the translator " as one who has proved by his 
preface to be a person of talents, and by every part 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 39 

of the work to be no ordinary master of at least one 
of the languages with which he has to deal ;" and, 
finally, this strange review (this time evidently "after 
the most deliberate consideration") winds up with 
its confession : " Many of the passages to which we 
have now alluded are executed with great talent, 
and, we are very sensible, are better worth extracting 
than those we have cited. But it is too late now to 
change our selections, and we can still less afford to 
add to them. On the whole, we close the book with 
some feeling of mollification towards its faults, and 
a disposition to abate, if possible, some part of the 
censure we were impelled to bestow on it at the be- 
ginning." 

"And now" (to resume my notes of Carlyle's 
story) "an event which had for a long time been 
visible as a possibility drew on to consummation. In 
the loneliest period of my later life here in Edin- 
burgh there was within reach one home and one 
family to which again Irving — always glad to do me 
a good turn — had introduced me.* At Haddington 
lived the Welshes, and there I had formed a friend- 
ship w^ith Jane, now Mrs. Carlyle. She was charac- 

* Irving has left an intimation that he himself was a lover of Jane 
Welsh. Carlyle's marriage took place, after a long engagement, in 
1826. She was a very brilliant writer, as her letters will show when 
published. She wrote a little story called "Watch and Canary;" 
and, it is said, had just set to work on a novel when she died. 



4:0 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

terized at that time by an earnest desire for knowl- 
edge, and I was for a long time aiding and directing 
her studies. The family were very grateful, and 
made it a kind of home for me. But when, further 
on, our marriage was spoken of, the family — not un- 
naturally, perhaps, mindful of their hereditary digni- 
ty (they were descended from John Knox) — opposed 
us rather firmly. But Jane Welsh, having taken her 
resolution, showed further her ability to defend it 
against all comers; and she maintained it to the 
extent of our presently dwelling man and wife at 
Comley Bank (Edinburgh), and then at the old soli- 
tary farm-house called Craigenputtoch, that is. Hill 
of the Hawk. The sketch of it in Goethe's transla- 
tion of my ' Schiller ' was made by George Moir, a 
lawyer here in Edinburgh, of whom I used to see 
something. The last time I saw old Craigenputtoch 
it filled me with sadness — a kind of Yalley of Jehosh- 
aphat. Probably it was through both the struggles 
of that time, the end of them being not yet, and the 
happy events with which it was associated — now 
buried and gone. It was there, and on our way 
there, that the greetings and gifts of Goethe over- 
took us ; and it was there that Emerson found us. 
He came from Dumfries in an old rusty gig ; came 
one day and vanished the next. I had never heard 
of him : he gave us his brief biography, and told us 
of his bereavement in loss of his wife. "We took a 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 41 

walk while dinner was prepared. We gave him a 
welcome, we were glad to see him : our house was 
homely, but she who presided there made it of neat- 
ness such as were at any moment suitable for a visit 
from any majesty. I did not then adequately recog- 
nize Emerson's genius; but my wife and I both 
thought him a beautiful transparent soul, and he was 
always a very pleasant object to us in the distance. 
Now and then a letter comes from him, and amid all 
the smoke and mist of this world it is always as a 
window flung open to the azure. During all this 
last weary work of mine, his words have been nearly 
the only ones about the thing done — ' Friedrich' — to 
which I have inwardly responded, ^Yes — yes — yes; 
and much obliged to you for saying that same!' 
Tlie other day I was staying with some people who 
talked about some books that seemed to me idle 
enough ; so I took up Emerson's ' English Traits,' 
and soon found myself lost to everything else — wan- 
dering amid all manner of sparkling crystals and 
wonderful luminous vistas; and it really appeared 
marvellous how people can read what they sometimes 
do with such books on their shelves. Emerson has 
gone a very different direction from any in which I 
can see my way to go ; but words cannot tell how I 
prize the old friendship formed there on Craigen- 
puttoch hill, or how deeply I have felt in all he has 
written the same aspiring intelligence which shone 



42 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

about US when he came as a young man, and left 
with us a memory always cherished. 

" After Emerson left us, gradually all determining 
interests drew us to London ; and there the main 
work, such as it is, has been done ; and now they 
have brought me down here, and got the talk out of 
me ! " 

But here I must take a longer pause. Much did 
Carlyle say here which I cannot even try to report. 
He spake not to me, but as if unaware of any one's 
presence ; as if conversing with the risen shades of 
a world I knew not. But, so often as I have read 
" Sartor Eesartus" since then, I have seen here and 
there the man at whose feet I was then sitting; 
most of all have I seen and heard the man of that 
quiet chamber in Edinburgh in the weird experience 
that closes " the everlasting No." That passage is a 
transcript from the life of Thomas Carlyle, and sum- 
ming-up of the years which preceded and ended that 
final venture (i. e., the Law), to enter upon some 
conventional work of the world. I w^ill ask my 
reader to ponder the words to which I have referred, 
and venture to quote here : 

" ' So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer — ' so 
had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, 
through long years. The heart within me, unvisited 
by any heavenly dew-drop, w^as smouldering in sul- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 43 

phurous, slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest 
memory I slied no tear ; or once only when I, mur- 
muring half-audibly, recited Faust's Deatli-song, that 
wild Selig der den er im Siegesglanze findet (Happy 
whom he finds in Battle's splendor), and thought 
that of this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that 
Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Hav- 
ing no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it 
of Man or of Devil ; nay, I often felt as if it might 
be solacing, could the Arch - devil himself, though 
in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might 
tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely 
enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite pining fear ; 
tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I know 
not what : it seemed as if all things in the heavens 
above and the earth beneath would hurt me ; as if 
the heavens and the earth w^ere but boundless jaws 
of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, wait- 
ed to be devoured. 

"'Full of such humor, and perhaps the misera- 
blest man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, 
was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much perambula- 
tion, toiling along the dirty little Rue Saint-Thomas 
de I'Enfer, among civic rubbish enough, in a close 
atmosphere, and over pavements hot as ]N"ebuchad- 
nezzar's Furnace, whereby, doubtless, my spirits were 
little cheered, when all at once there rose a Thought 
in me, and I asked myself ; " What art thou afraid 



44 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever 
pip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? 
Despicable biped ! what is the sum-total of the worst 
that lies before thee ! Death ? Well, Death ; and 
say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil 
and Man may, will, or can do against thee. Hast 
thou not a heart ? canst thou not suffer whatsoever 
it be ? and as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, 
trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it con- 
sumes thee ? Let it come, then ; I will meet it and 
defy it !" And as I so thought, there rushed like a 
stream of fire over my whole soul ; and I shook base 
Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of un- 
known strength ; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from 
that time the temper of my misery was changed : 
not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, but Indignation 
and grim-eyed Defiance. 

"'Thus had the Eveelasting 'No {das ewige 
Wein) pealed authoritatively through all the recesses 
of my Being, of my Me ; and then it w^as that my 
whole Me stood up, in native God-created majesty, 
and with emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a 
Protest, the most important transaction in life, may 
that Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological 
point of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting ]^o 
had said, "Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and 
the Universe is mine (the Devil's)," to which my 
w^hole Me now made answer, "/am not thine, but 
Free, and forever hate thee !" 



THOMAS OAELYLE. 45 

"'It is from this hour that I incline to date my 
Spiritual ^ew-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism ; 
perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a Man.' " 

This walk in Paris must not be supposed allegori- 
cal. Carlyle told me that it actually stood in his 
life as it is written in his book. He had not heard 
the story of how this Rue de I'Enfer came by its name 
until I encountered it while writing my " Demonol- 
ogy." In the time of Saint Louis it was a road sup- 
posed to be haunted by a fearful green monster, the 
Diable Yauvert, a dragon-man, who twisted the necks 
of all he met. It would appear to have been a phan- 
tasm got up by a murderous band of money-coiners, 
who occupied the ancient Chateau Yauvert. The 
Carthusian monks having offered to exorcise the 
devils if Saint Louis would give them the chateau, 
that was done. The Diable Yauvert left his trail 
only in the name of the street, now called Rocherau- 
Enfer. I^ear-by is the convent Saint Michael. But 
the only real dragon-slayer from the time of Saint 
Louis until now who has passed that way was the 
young Scotchman who there laid low the phantasm 
of Fear with the poised spear of a free mind. 

One of the sorrowful days of that period was that 
on which he was compelled to open an abyss be- 
tween himself and Edward Irving. On a long walk 
they sat down together, and Carlyle unfolded to him, 
as well as he could to a man who could so little com- 



46 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

prehend them, the intellectual experiences which 
forbade his entering on the ministry. They parted 
to go their several ways. But Carlyle never lost his 
love for his early friend ; even when Irving was far 
gone in insanity, he visited him and tried to soothe 
him. "Friendliness still beamed in his eyes," he 
wrote, " but now from amid unquiet fire ; his face 
was flaccid, wasted, unsound ; hoary as with extreme 
age : he was trembling over the brink of the grave. 
Adieu, thou first friend — adieu, while this confused 
twilight of existence lasts !" 

IV. 

When I left Mr. Ersldne's house that night, it was 
to go to the office of the Scotsman^ in order to revise 
the proof of the new Lord Eector's address. Car- 
lyle placed in my hands the notes he had made be- 
forehand for the occasion, saying, as he did so, that 
he did not suppose they would assist me much. His 
surmise proved unhappily true. The notes had been 
written partly in his own hand, partly by an amanu- 
ensis. Those written by the amanuensis had been 
but little followed in the address, and those added 
by himself w^ere nearly undecipherable. Already 
that tremor which so long affected his hand when 
he held a pen — it was much steadier when he used a 
pencil — afflicted him. The best-written sentences in 
the notes (now before me) are the lines of Goethe 






<< 






*'^^, 



1 






FAC-SIMILE OP CARLYLE'S HANDWRITING. 



'4^^^.P!^' 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 47 

which he repeated at the close of the address, a fac- 
simile of which I give. 

For the rest, I find in these notes (which, on my 
request, he said I was welcome to keep) some pas- 
sages which were not spoken, but were meant to 
reach the public. I therefore quote them here, pre- 
mising only that where I have supplied more than a 
connecting word, such phrase is put in brackets, and 
mainly supplied from what he really did say. 

EXTKACTS FKOM THE NOTES. 
" Beautiful is young enthusiasm ; keep it to the end, and be more 
and more correct in fixing on the object of it. It is a terrible thing 
to be wrong in that — the source of all our miseries and confusions 
whatever." 

" The ' Seven Liberal Arts' notion of education is now a little ob- 
solete ; but try Avhatever is set before you ; gradually find what is fit- 
test for you. This you will learn to read in all sciences and subjects." 

" You will not learn it from any current set of History Books ; but 
God has not gone to sleep, and eternal Justice, not eternal Vulpinism 
[is the law of the imiverse]." 

"It was for religion that universities were first instituted; practi- 
cally for that, under all changes of dialect, they continue : pious awe 
of the Great Unknown makes a sacred canopy, under which all has 
to grow. AH is lost and futile in universities if that fail. Sciences 
and technicalities are very good and useful, indeed, but in comparison 
they are as adjuncts to the smith's shop." 

"There is in this university a considerable stir about endowments. 
That there should be need of such is not honorable to us at a time 
when so many in Scotland and elsewhere have suddenly become pos- 



48 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

sessed of millions which they do not know what to do with. Like 
that Lancashire gentleman who left a quarter of a million to help pay 
the national debt. Poor soul ! AH he had got in a life of toil and 
struggle were certain virtues — diligence, frugality, endurance, pa- 
tience — tfuly an invaluable item, but an invisible one. The money 
which secured all was strictly zero ! I am aware, all of us are aware, 
a little money is needed ; but there are limits to the need of money — 
comparatively altogether narrow limits. To every mortal in this stu- 
pendous universe incalculably higher objects than money ! The deep- 
est depths of Vulgarism is that of setting up money as our Ark of the 
Covenant. Devorgilla gave [a good deal of money gathered by John 
Balliol in Scotland] to Balliol College in Oxford, and we don't want 
it back ; but as to the then ratio of man's soul to man's stomach, 
man's celestial part to his terrestrial, and even bestial, compared to 
the now ratio in such improved circumstances, is a reflection, if we 
pursue it, that might humble us to the dust. 

*' [The English are the richest people, in the way of endowments, on 
the face of the earth, in their universities ; and it is a remarkable fact 
that since the time of Bentley you cannot name anybody that has 
gained a great name in scholarship among them, or constituted a 
point of revolution in the pursuits of men in that way. The man 
that does that is worthy of being remembered among men, though he 
may be poor, not endowed with worldly wealth. One man that actu- 
ally did constitute a revolution was the son of a poor weaver in Sax- 
ony, who edited his ' TibuUus ' in Dresden in the loom of a poor 
comrade, and while he was editing it had to gather peascod shells in 
the street and boil them for dinner. His name was Heyne. I can 
remember it was quite a revolution in my mind when I got hold of 
that man's book on Virgil.] Be zealous [for learning]: far beyond 
money is it to use well what is prepared for us. You cannot wait on 
better times ; for you, it is here and now, or else never ; the better* 
times will come if they can. 

"We have ceased to believe, as Devorgilla did, that in colleges and 
monasteries is the certain road to Wisdom ; and, alas ! secondly, that 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 49 

Wisdom is the way to heaven. Many of us think — do they not? 
though nobody will say so — that cent, per cent, is the real course that 
leads to advantages. In regard to the colleges and monasteries, I 
agree with all the world in considerably dissenting from Devorgilla. 
Wisdom is not quite so certainly to be obtained there ; but in regard 
to the second proposition, I do go with her, and invite every living 
soul to go with her — that Wisdom is, was, and to the end of time and 
through eternity will be, the supreme object for a man, and the only 
path upward for his objects and for him. Yes, my friends, especially 
you, my young friends, that is forever the divine thing for us ; what- 
ever heaven we can expect, there, or nowhere, is the road to it. [In 
Wisdom, * namely, sound appreciation and just decision as to all the 
objects that come round about you, and the habit of behaA'ing with 
justice and wisdom.'] I would have you reflect much upon this, 
mostly in silence, in all stages of your life-journey, in all scenes and 
situations ; the more purely you can discern that, and the more stead- 
fastly act upon it, the better it will be for you. On other terms, vic- 
tory is possible for no man. 

' ' Silent Wisdom ! The mute ages, they say nothing for themselves ; 
but in this, the object and centre of all articulate knowledge, one has 
to call them far more opulent. The old Baron who had no literature 
whatever, could not sign his name, had to put his cross mark, some- 
times dipped his iron hand and stamped that — many a 'brilliant' 
writing and what not seems to me the reverse of improvement on 
him ! Noble virtues dwelt in him, spotless honor in interests not to 
be measured in worldly good, an authentic commerce with heaven 
not at all recognizable in his witty descendant. Prudent, patient, 
valiant, steering towards his object with all the qualities needful, and 
his object a good one, one begins to see in him what the real History 
of England was — the making of the best men. And so it lasted for 
six or seven generations. When you once put speech into that, it is 
a glorious thing — glorious to the wise man himself, and to all the 
world. But let me remind you, you may superadd speech, and un- 
fortunately have little or nothing of all that to superadd it to. A 

3 



50 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

man may actually have no wisdom, and be a very great talker. How 
to regain all that ? You will regain it in proportion as you are sin- 
cere. I often hear of an "excellent speech ;" well, but it is the ex- 
istence of the things spoken that will benefit me. So much depends 
on a man's morality ; on the heart fully as much depends as on the 
head — the Heart is first of all ! There are 75,000 sermons preached 
every Sunday — dry-rot ; but I will not suppose you gone into that 
state. It is a long road I have travelled, and you are all upon it, 
struggling forward into the undiscovered country, which to your fa- 
thers and grandfathers is but too well known ; surely if they would 
speak to you with candor and sincerity and insight, they might throw 
some light on it. 

" If all this is the supreme end of universities, it becomes more and 
more dubious of attainment therein. The old Baron learned by ap- 
prenticeship ; theoretic instruction will not do ; it is a dreadful case 
when the theoretic is got, and the real missed. This has led some 
to think of mute education." 

"What is fame? Shakespeare ends with, ' Good friend, for Jesus' 
sake, forbear!'" 

" Much confusion you may count on ahead, but there are beneficent 
hearts too : their doors may seem closed ; but such you will find, and 
their human love of you and help of you will be balm for all your 
wounds." 

In transmitting a report of Carljle's address as 
Lord Rector to tlie Pall Mall Gazette, I wrote a 
note, which was printed in that journal, and which I 
venture to insert here : " I have never heard a speech 
of whose more remarkable qualities so few can be 
conveyed on paper. You will read of 'applause' 
and 'laughter,' but you will little realize the elo- 
quent blood flaming up the speaker's cheek, the 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 51 

kindling of his eye, or the inexpressible voice and 
look when the drolleries were coming out. When 
he spoke of clap-trap books exciting astonishment 
' in the minds of foolish persons,' the evident halting 
at the word ' fools,' and the smoothing of his hair, as 
if he must be decorous, which preceded the ' foolish 
persons,' were exceedingly comical. As for the flam- 
ing bursts, they took shape in grand tones, whose 
impression was made deeper, not by raising, but by 
lowering the voice. Your correspondent here de- 
clares that he should hold it worth his coming all 
the way from London in the rain in the Sunday- 
night train were it only to have heard Carlyle say, 
' There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all 
California, or the getting of all the suffrages that are 
on the planet just now.' In the first few minutes 
of the address there was some hesitation, and much 
of the shrinking that one might expect in a secluded 
scholar ; but these very soon cleared away, and dur- 
ing the larger part, and to the close of the oration, 
it was evident that he was receiving a sympathetic 
influence from his listeners, which he did not fail to 
return tenfold. The applause became less frequent ; 
the silence became that of a woven spell; and the 
recitation of the beautiful lines from Goethe at the 
end was so masterly, so marvellous, that one felt in 
it that Carlyle's real anathemas against rhetoric were 
but the expression of his knowledge that there is a 
rhetoric beyond all other arts." 



52 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

Y. 

On the evening of the Edinburgh Address, I wrote 
to Mrs. Carljle, giving particulars concerning Car- 
lyle and the installation which I knew she would be 
glad to hear. Alas ! alas ! It was but a few weeks 
after that I placed in Carljle's hand, when he re- 
turned from her grave, the answer to my letter — one 
of the last she ever wrote. Here it is : 

"5 Chetne Eow, Chelsea, 5 April, 1866. 

"My dear Mr. Conway, — The 'disposition to write me a little 
note,' was a good inspiration, and I thank you for it; or rather, ac- 
cepting it as an inspiration, I thank Providence for it — Providence, 
'Immortal Gods,' 'Superior Powers,' 'Destinies,' Avhichever be the 
name you like best. 

" Indeed, by far the most agreeable part of this flare-up of success, 
to my feeling, has been the enthusiasm of personal affection and sym- 
pathy on the part of his friends. I haven't been so fond of every- 
body, and so pleased with the world, since I was a girl, as just in 
these days when reading the letters of his friends, your own included. 
I am not very well, having done what I do at every opportunity — 
gone oflf my sleep ; so I am preparing to spend a day and night at 
Windsor for change of atmosphere, moral as well as material. I am 
in a hurry, but couldn't refrain from saying, 'Thank you, and all 
good be with you !' 

" Sincerely yours, Jane W. Carlyle." 

"Whatever 'triumph' there may have been," said 
Carlyle, when I next met him, " in that now so dark- 
ly overcast day, was indeed he7's. Long, long years 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 53 

ago, she took her place by the side of a poor man of 
humblest condition, against all other provisions for 
her, undertook to share his lot for weal or woe ; and 
in that office what she has been to him and done for 
him, how she has placed, as it were, velvet between 
him and all the sharp angularities of existence, re- 
mains now only in the knowledge of one man, and 
will presently be finally hid in his grave." 

J^othing could be more beautiful than the loving 
reverence of Carlyle for the delicate, soft-voiced lit- 
tle lady whose epitaph he wrote in words that may 
here be quoted : 

*'Here likewise now rests Jane Welsh Carlyle, spouse of Thomas 
Carlyle, Chelsea, London. She was born at Haddington, 14th July, 
] 801 , only child of the above John Welsh and of Grace Welsh, Caple- 
gell, Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her bright existence she had more 
sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a capacity of 
discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart, which are rare. For forty 
years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by 
act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of 
worthy that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April, 
1 866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as if 
gone out." 

When Carlyle's mood was stormiest, her voice 
could in an instant allay it ; the lion was led as by a 
little child. She sat a gentle invalid on the sofa, and 
in the end, whatever had been the outburst of indig- 
nation, justice was sure to be done, and the mitiga- 
tion sure to be remembered. I can hear her voice 



54 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

now — " But, Mr. Carljle, you remember he did act 
very nobly towards that poor man," etc., followed 
from the just now Rhadamanthus with, " Ah, yes ; 
he had, after all, a vein of good feeling in him ;" and 
then came the neatest summing-up of virtues con- 
cerning some personage whose fragments we had 
despaired of ever picking up. Carlyle was always 
modest when speaking of himself — which he rarely 
did — and artistic in his portraits of others. The 
shades might be laid on rather thickly at first, but 
the lights were sure to be added at each possible 
point, — except, indeed, in the case of a few typical 
public figures, to hate whom was in the essence of 
his religion. Mrs. Carlyle had a true poetic nature 
and an almost infallible insight. In the conversation 
which went on in the old drawing-room at Chelsea 
there was no suggestion of things secret or reserved ; 
people with sensitive toes had no careful provision 
made for them, and had best keep away ; free, frank, 
and simple speech and intercourse were the unwrit- 
ten but ever-present law. Mrs. Carlyle's wit and 
humor were overflowing, and she told anecdotes 
about her husband under which he sat with a pa- 
tient look of repudiation until the loud laugh broke 
out and led the chorus. E"ow it was when she de- 
scribed his work on "Friedrich" as one of those 
botanical growths which every now and then come 
to a knot, which being slowly passed, it grows on 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 55 

to another knot. " What Mr. Carljle is when one 
of those knots is reached, must be left to vivid im- 
aginations." Again it was a transitory cook who 
served up daily some mess described by Carlyle as 
"Stygian," with "Tartarean" for a variant. She 
being dismissed, another applicant comes. 

" Carlyle having, you are aware, deep intuitive in- 
sight into human character, goes down to speak to 
the new woman, and returns to pronounce her a most 
worthy and honest person. The woman next comes 
to me, and a more accomplished Sairey Gamp my 
eyes never looked on. The great coarse creature 
comes close, eyes me from head to foot, and begins 
by telling me, ^ When people dies, I can lay 'em out 
perfect.' ' Sairey ' was not retained, though I had 
no doubt whatever of her ability to lay any of us out 
' perfect.' " 

One evening the talk fell on the Brownings. Car- 
lyle had given us the most attractive picture of Rob- 
ert Browning in his youth. " He had simple speech 
and manners, and ideas of his own ; and I recall a 
very pleasing talk with him during a walk, some- 
where about Croydon, to the top of a hill. Miss 
Barrett sent me some of her first verses in manu- 
script, and I wrote back that I thought she could do 
better than write verses. But then she wrote again, 
saying: 'What else can I do? Here am I chained 
to my sofa by disease.' I wrote then, taking back all 



56 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

I had said. Her father was a physician, late from 
India ; a harsh impracticable man, as I have heard, 
his lightest word standing out like laws of the Modes 
and Persians. One day she read some verses Brown- 
ing had written about her." " Oh no," interrupts 
Mrs. Carlyle, "she wrote something about Brown- 
ing." " Ah, well," continues Carlyle, " you shall give 
the revised and corrected edition presently. As I 
was saying, she wrote something about him, compar- 
ing him to some fruit — " " Oh, Mr. Carlyle !" ex- 
claims Mrs. C. " She compared him," continues Car- 
lyle, " to a nectarine." " That's too bad," says Mrs. 
Carlyle ; " she compared his poetry to a pomegranate 
— it was suggested by the title of his poems, " Bells 
and Pomegranates : 

*' 'And from Browning some pomegranate which, cut deep down the 
middle, 
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veined humanity.' " 

" I stand corrected," says Carlyle, " and the lines are 
very sweet and true ;" and he then proceeded to tell 
the pleasant romance on which he set out with a sub- 
tle appreciation and sympathetic admiration which 
made it sweeter than the tale of the Sleeping Beauty. 
The advice which Carlyle gave to Miss Barrett, 
and which so many will rejoice that she did not fol- 
low, but induced him to take back, was characteristic. 
That Carlyle was himself a poet all his true readers 
know ; had his early life been happier, it is even 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 57 

probable that he might have broken upon the world 
with songs such as his " Tragedy of the Night-moth" 
and "Here hath been dawning another blue day" 
show him to have been amply able to sing ; but his 
ideal was too literally a turden to rise with full free- 
dom on its wings. He could rarely or never read 
the rhymes of his contemporaries — Goethe always 
excepted — without a sense of some frivolity in that 
mode of expression. The motto of "Past and Pres- 
ent," from Schiller — "Ernst ist das Leben" — was 
deeply graven on Carlyle's heart. Thomas Cooper, 
author of the " Purgatory of Suicides " (dedicated to 
Carlyle), like so many others who had suffered for 
their efforts for reform, was befriended by Carlyle. 
"Twice," says Cooper, in his Autobiography, "he 
put a five-pound note in my hand when I was in 
difficulties, and told me, with a grave look of humor, 
that if I could never pay him again he would not 
hang me." Carlyle gave Cooper more than money — 
a copy of "Past and Present," and therewith some 
excellent advice. The letter is fine, and my reader 
will be glad to read it. 

"Chelsea, September 1, 1845. 
''Dear Sik, — I have received your poem, and will thank you for 
that kind gift, and for all the friendly sentiments you entertain tow- 
ards me — which, as from an evidently sincere man, whatever we may 
think of them otherwise, are surely valuable to a man. I have looked 
into your poem, and find indisputable traces of genius in it — a dark 

3* 



58 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

Titanic energy struggling there, for which we hope there will be a 
clearer daylight by-and-by. If I might presume to advise, I think I 
would recommend you to try your next work in Prose, and as a thing 
turning altogether on Facts, not Fictions. Certainly the music that 
is very traceable here might serve to irradiate into harmony far prof- 
itabler things than what are commonly called ' Poems,' for which, at 
any rate, the taste in these days seems to be irrevocably in abeyance. 
We have too horrible a practical chaos round us, out of which every 
man is called by the birth of him to make a bit of Cosmos; that seems 
to me the real Poem for a man — especially at present. I always 
grudge to see any portion of a man's musical talent (which is the real 
intellect, the real vitality or life of him) expended on making mere 
words rhyme. These things I say to all my poetic friends, for I am 
in earnest about them ; but get almost nobody to believe me hitherto. 
Prom you I shall get an excuse at any rate, the purpose of my so 
speaking being a friendly one towards you. 

"I will request you, further, to accept this book of mine, and to ap- 
propriate what you can of it. 'Life is a serious thing,' as Schiller 
says, and as you yourself practically know. These are the words of a 
serious man about it ; they will not altogether be without meaning 
for you." 

Those wlio have read the " Purgatory of Suicides" 
will be able to understand the extent to which Car- 
lyle was influenced by his sympathies. A man who, 
like Cooper, had been in jail for Chartist opinions 
might be pretty sure, in those days, of getting a cer- 
tificate for some " traces of genius " from Carlyle. 
My old friend William Lovett, a worldng-man and a 
Radical, who had written a forcible letter to the Eng- 
lish people from "Warwick Jail, related to me the 
tenderness and warmth with which he was received 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 59 

by Carlyle. Indeed, the author of " Chartism" wrote 
his name so deep in the hearts of old Radicals that 
they were never able to look far enough beyond his 
sympathies to read his censures or his retractations. 

When Carlyle came to live in London, it was with 
something of the same feeling that animated the 
Friar Bernard when he went to Rome, according to 
the legend so finely used by Emerson in his lecture 
on "The Conservative" (1841). The Friar had la- 
mented in his cell on Mont Cenis the crimes of 
mankind, and went to Rome to reform the general 
corruption ; but when he reached Rome, he was wel- 
comed in the homes of the rich, found them loving 
each other, bestowing alms on the poor, trying to 
relieve the hard times. "Then the Friar Bernard 
went home swiftly with other thoughts than he 
brought, saying, 'This way of life is wrong; yet 
these Romans, whom I prayed God to destroy, are 
lovers, they are lovers: what can I do?'" Carlyle 
was disappointed in the two classes — that from 
which he hoped much, that from which he looked 
for little. As his favorite heroes had been poor 
men, working-men or even peasants, who had risen 
above all obstacles, so did he again and again cheer 
and help and idealize men like Thomas Cooper and 
Ebenezer Elliott and Samuel Bamford, seeing in 
them morning-stars. But these faded away, or set, 
without casting any great splendors over the world. 



60 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

On the other hand, he found aristocratic friends, like 
Lansdowne and Ashburton, all alive to the evils of 
the time, sympathizing with the Radicals, Chartists, 
fighters against the Corn-laws. Carljle's radicalism 
gradually faded, and in the Continental revolutions 
of 1848 went out altogether. 

Four letters have recently been laid before the 
Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 
and printed in the Examiner there, of which some 
extracts must be quoted here. They were written 
by Carlyle to Samuel Bamford, an old Radical who 
had been to prison, and had struggled by the side of 
Henry 'Hunt — idealized in George Eliot's "Felix 
Holt, the Radical." Bamford began a record of his 
experiences in a little book called " Life of a Radi- 
cal," and sent a copy of it to Carlyle. It was ac- 
knowledged with enthusiasm (1843), and several cop- 
ies ordered by the author at Chelsea. He wrote : 

"I read your book with much interest; with a true desire to hear 
more and more of the authentic news of Middleton and of the honest 
toiling men there. Many persons have a similar desire. I would 
recommend you to try whether there is not yet more to be said, per- 
haps, on some side of that subject ; for it belongs to an important 
class in these days. A man is at all times entitled, or even called 
upon by occasion, to speak and write and in all fit ways utter what he 
has himself gone through and known and got the mastery of; and 
in truth, at bottom, there is nothing else that any man has a right to 
write of. For the rest, one principle, I think, in whatever farther you 
write, may be enough to guide you : that of standing rigorously by the 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 61 

fact, however naked it look. Fact is eternal ; all fiction is very transi- 
tory in comparison. All men are interested in any man if he will 
speak the facts of his life for them ; his authentic experience, which 
corresponds, as face with face, to that of all other sons of Adam." 

The letter from which this was taken was dated at 
Chelsea. The next letter, acknowledging a further 
instalment of Bamford's " Life," is written five years 
later, and dated at " The Grange, Hampshire," where 
Carljle was staying with his aristocratic friends. In 
this he writes : 

"There are only two precepts I will bid you, once more, always 
keep in mind : the first is to be brief; not to dwell on an object one 
instant after you have made it clear to the reader, and, on the whole, 
to be select in your objects taken for description, dwelling on each in 
proportion to its likelihood to interest, omitting many in which such 
likelihood is doubtful, and only bringing out the more important into 
prominence and detail. The second, which indeed is still more essen- 
tial, but which I need not insist upon, since I see you scrupulously 
observe it, is to be exact to the truth in all points ; never to hope to 
mend a fact by polishing any corner of it off into fiction, or adding 
any ornament which it had not, but to give it us always as God gave 
it — that, I suppose, will turn out to be best state it could be in ! These 
two principles, I think, are the whole law of the matter ; and, in fact, 
they are the epitome of what a sound, strong, and healthy mind will, 
by Nature, be led to achieve in such an enterprise ; wherefore, per- 
haps, my best * precept ' of all were, to recommend Samuel Bamford 
to his own good genius (to his own honest good sense and healthy in- 
stincts) and bid him write or omit without misgivings whenever that 
had clearly spoken ! And, on the whole, persevere and prosper ; that 
is the wish we form for you. 

**We are here among high people, to whom the 'Passages' and 
other writings of yours are known : last night I was commissioned by 
Lord Lansdowne, to ask you to send him a copy of this new work." 



62 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

The year in which this last letter is dated (1848) 
was, as I have said, that revolutionary year, in several 
senses, which revolutionized Carlyle, and began his 
reaction against radicalism. As Wordsworth was 
turned to his extreme conservatism by the French 
Revolution — during part of which he was in Paris — 
so Carlyle was repelled and disgusted by the events 
of '48 on the Continent. There is just a slight in- 
dication of the change in the third letter to Bamford, 
from which I give an extract as follows : 

•' On the whole, however, we must not yet let you off, or allow you 
to persuade yourself that you have done with us. A vast deal more 
of knowledge about Lancashire operatives, and their ways of living 
and thinking, their miseries and advantages, their virtues and sins, 
still lies in your experience ; and you must endeavor, by all good 
methods, to get it winnowed, the chaff of it well separated from the 
wheat, and to let us have the latter, as your convenience will serve. 
To workers themselves you might have much to say, in the way of 
admonition, encouragement, instruction, reproof; and the Captains 
of Workers, the rich people, are very willing also to listen to you, and 
certain of them will believe heartily whatever true thing you tell 
them : this is a combination of auditors which nobody but yourself 
has such hold of at present ; and you must encourage yourself to do 
with all fidelity whatever you can in that peculiar and by no means 
unimportant position you occupy. ' Brevity, sincerity' — and, in fact, 
all sorts of manful virtue — will have once more, as they everywhere in 
this world do, avail you." 

It is very faint though — the tinge of reaction — as 
yet; only a little more faith in the "Captains of 
"Workers," and a shade less in the workmen. The 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 63 

letter was written in January, 1849. The next is in 
April of tlie same year. In it he encloses twenty-five 
pounds presented by Lord Ashbnrton to Bamford, in 
whose Life that nobleman had been interested. It 
would seem that Bamford had written and wished to 
publish some poems ; that was a thing Carlyle never 
failed to oppose. He says the publishers do not want 
poetry ; the public will not buy it ; poetry is a bug- 
bear : 

'Tor my own part, too, I own I had much rather see a sensible 
man, like you, put down your real thoughts and convictions in prose, 
than occupy yourself with fancies and imaginations such as are usu- 
ally dealt with in verse. The time is in deadly earnest; our life 
itself, in all times, is a most earnest practical matter, and only inci- 
dentally a sportful or singing or rhyming one : let S. Bamford con- 
tinue to tell us in fresh truthful prose the things he has learned about 
Lancashire and the world ; tliat, I must say, would be my verdict 
too !" 

So hard did Carlyle struggle to believe in the 
British working-men ! Heading these letters, I can 
only once more mourn that his early difficulties did 
not make good their threat of sending him over to 
America. Thor with his hammer — and the "trip- 
hammer with seolian attachment," as Emerson de- 
scribed it — had happier work awaiting him in the 
New World than any he found in the Old. 

When Carlyle visited Berlin, he went to a museum 
there. " The keeper of it," he told me, "insisted on 
showing me everything in the place; but what I went 



64 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

to see was Friedricli's clothes. It was as if one 
should go into an inn to take a chop, and they in- 
sisted he must eat everything in, their store. Final- 
ly, after some contention, I looked upon Friedrich's 
military old clothes. And I saw that I really had 
properly nothing to do with those clothes. Consid- 
erations of self-respect, chiefly, made me undertake 
the * Life of Friedrich,' but it has been all toil and 
pain." Carlyle's sigh as he spoke of "Friedrich's 
military old clothes" was more pathetic than any- 
thing in " Sartor." The hammer had done its tre- 
mendous stroke of work, but the strain of the seolian 
attachment was evermore in the minor key. 

YI. 

Carlyle and his young wife had visited London 
before there was any thought of their going to reside 
there. In February, 1832, they were staying at 'No. 4 
Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Eoad. Here one morn- 
ing Carlyle received a volume addressed to the au- 
thor of the essay on " Characteristics." It was ac- 
knowledged in this note : 

"The writer of the essay named 'Characteristics' has just re- 
ceived, apparently from Mr. Leigh Hunt, a volume entitled * Chris- 
tianism,' for which he hereby begs to express his thanks. The vol- 
ume shall be read : to meet the author of it personally would doubt- 
less be a new gratification. T. Carlyle." 

The volume alluded to bore on its title-page: 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 65 

" ' Cbristianism ; or, Belief and Unbelief Eeconciled.' 
Being Exercises and Meditations. ' Mercy and Truth 
have met together ; Righteousness and Peace have 
kissed each other.' ISTot for sale ; only seventy-five 
copies printed. 1832." It was a book which com- 
pletely captivated the heart of Carlyle. It was en- 
larged and published in 1853 under the title " The 
Heligion of the Heart," but I cannot forbear offering 
here an extract from its preface, styled " Introduc- 
tory Letter," and signed Leigh Hunt : 

''To begin the day with an avowed sense of duty and a mutual 
cheerfulness of endeavor is at least an earnest of its being gone through 
with the better. The dry sense of duty, or even of kindness, if rarely 
accompanied with a tender expression of it, is but a formal and dumb 
virtue, compared with a livelier sympathy : and it misses part of its 
object, for it contributes so much the less to happiness. Affection 
loves to hear the voice of affection. Love wishes to be told that it is 
beloved. It is humble enough to seek in the reward of that acknowl- 
edgment the certainty of having done its duty. In the pages before 
you there is as much as possible of this mutual strengthening of be- 
nevolence, and as little of dogmatism. They were written in a spirit 
of sincerity, which would not allow a different proceeding. . . . Some 
virtues which have been thought of little comparative moment, such 
as those which tend to keep the body in health and the mind in good 
temper, are impressed upon the aspirant as religious duties. What 
virtues can be of greater consequence than those which regulate the 
color of the whole ground of life, and effect the greatest purposes of 
all virtue and all benevolence ? Much is made, accordingly, not only 
of the bodily duties, but of the very duty of cheerfulness, and of set- 
ting a cheerful example. In a word, the whole object is to encourage 
everybody to be, and to make, happy; to look generously, neverthe- 



G6 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

less, on such pains, as well as pleasure, as are necessary for this pur- 
pose ; to seek, as much as possible, and much more than is common, 
their own pleasures through the medium of those of others ; to co- 
operate with heaven, instead of thinking it has made us only to mourn 
and be resigned ; to unite in the great work of extending knowledge 
and education ; to cultivate a reasonable industry, and an equally rea- 
sonable enjoyment ; not to think gloomily of this world, because we 
hope for a better ; not to cease to hope for a better, because we may 
be able to commence our heaven in this." 

Carlyle was already weary of the shrill negations, 
albeit he had accepted many of them, and found in 
such thoughts and aspirations as these the expression 
of a congenial spirit. He had, indeed, read with ad- 
miration Leigh Hunt's previous and public works, 
but now he longed to know him. The brief note 
quoted seems to have elicited a cordial response 
from Leigh Hunt. Here is another note from Car- 
lyle to Leigh Hunt, dated soon after the last quoted : 

"4 Ampton Street, 
"Gray's Inn Egad, 20tk February, 1832. 
"Dear Sir, — I stay at home (scribbling) till after two o'clock, 
and shall be truly glad, any morning, to meet in person a man whom 
I have long, in spirit, seen and esteemed. 

" Both my wife and I, however, would reckon it a still greater favor 
could you come at once in the evening, and take tea with us, that our 
interview might be the longer and freer. Might we expect you, for 
instance, on Wednesday night? Our hour is six o'clock ; but we will 
alter it in any way to suit you. 

"We venture to make this proposal because our stay in town is 
now likely to be short, and we should be sorry to miss having free 
speech of you. Believe me, dear sir, very sincerely yours, 

"Thomas Carlyle." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 67 

Here, then, in a rather dingy part of London, be- 
gan the lasting friendship between Carlyle and Leigh 
Hunt, illustrated in the letters contained in Part HI. 
of this work. 

Readers of Leigh Hunt's " Autobiography " need 
not be reminded of the loving reverence with which 
that author regarded Carlyle. " I believe," he wrote, 
"that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than his fault- 
finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any hu- 
man creature that looks suffering and loving and 
sincere; and I believe, further, that if the fellow- 
creature were suffering only, and neither loving nor 
sincere, but had come to a pass of agony in this life 
which put him at the mercies of some good man for 
some last help and consolation towards his grave, 
even at the risk of loss to repute, and a sure amount 
of pain and vexation, that man, if the groan reached 
him in its forlornness, would be Thomas Carlyle." 

There is a tradition, I believe a true one, that the 
two chief male characters in " The Onyx Ring," by 
John Sterling, were meant to represent Carlyle and 
Goethe (Collins and Walsingham). Those who have 
read that charming romance will recognize in its 
great-hearted hero an estimate of Carlyle confirma- 
tory of Leigh Hunt, and even more important as 
coming from the most intimate friend Carlyle ever 
had.* 

* "Not far," said Maria, "from tlie point we are approaching, 



68 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

It was a characteristic of Carlyle that, though he 
really loved but few, he never recalled his heart once 
given. There were many who felt that (as I once 
heard Mill say) " Carlyle had turned against all his 

lives the man we have before spoken of — the hermit Collins. I have 
seen him often ; and, strange as he is, I like him very much. There 
is such thorough honesty about him, as well as so much queer un- 
couth kindness, that he interests me extremely. He is the most 
marked and original figure I have ever heard of in England. What- 
ever is usual or commonplace among us seems to have influenced 
him only by contraries, and called out nothing but opposition." 

"All that," answered Walsingham, "is very foolish, or at least 
very imperfectly wise. In every age there is good enough, if a man 
will put himself into harmony with it, to enable him to produce more 
good out of it. . . . We are not thrown down out of the sky like 
meteoric stones, but are formed by the same laws and gradual proc- 
esses as all about us, and so are adapted to it all, and it to us. But, 
no doubt, Collins will fight his way through his present angry element 
to peace and activity. What employment has he now ?" 

" He minds his beehives. To the few people he ever sees, he talks 
quaintly and vigorously — I sometimes think, wildly; but all he says 
has a strong stamp upon it, and never could pass from hand to hand 
without notice. After having heard him, some of his phrases keep 
ringing in one's ears, as if he had sent a goblin trumpeter to haunt 
one with the sound, for days and nights after. But I have always 
felt that he has more in his mind than ever comes out in the expres- 
sion ; and, odd as his talk is, I should hardly call it aftected or con- 
ceited." 

"Ah! no doubt there must be much genuine nature there. But 
although these vehement lava-lumps and burning coals of his may be 
no mere showy fii'ework, and do shoot out from a hot central furnace, 
I would rather it were so much cool, clear water, pouring from an in- 
ward lake of freshness." 



THOMAS CAKLTLE. 69 

friends," but this was only true of their radicalism, 
which he once shared. On the' other hand, Charles 
Kingslej, who had shared his reaction in political 
affairs, kept away from him a good deal in later years 
because he felt himself to be one of the large num- 
ber implicitly arraigned in the " Life of Sterling " as 
the disappointed young ladies who had taken the 
veil. But Carlyle always spoke affectionately of 
Kingsley. " I have a very vivid remembrance," he 
once said, " of Charles coming with his mother to 
see me. A lovely woman she was, with large, clear 
eyes, a somewhat pathetic expression of countenance, 
sincerely interested in all religious questions. The- 
delicate boy she brought with her had much the 
same expression, and sat listening with intense and 
silent interest to all that was said. He was always 
of an eager, loving, poetic nature." 

With Alfred Tennyson his frequent intercourse 
was interrupted when the poet went to reside in the 
Isle of Wight. Until then they used to sit with a 

*' I can fancy him saying — the All is right. There must be a Fire- 
God as well as a Water-God. If there were no fire-forces seething 
and blasting, for aught you know the fountains and flood-forces would 
stagnate into slime. ..." 

"All very true. But I stoop to drink of the stream ; and I hasten 
away from the eruption." 

"In this case," replied Maria, laughing, "the eruption saves you 
the trouble. It seeks no one, and loves its solitude" (^"The Onyx 
Ring ;" published in Blackwood's Magazine, 1838). 



70 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

little circle of friends under the one tree tliat made 
the academy of the Chelsea home, smoke long pipes, 
and interchange long arguments. But they remained 
warm friends ; and when Tennyson visited London, 
they generally met, and were very apt to relapse into 
the old current of conversation that had begun under 
the tree. I may mention here the delicacy of Carlyle 
towards Tennyson when they were both offered titles 
at the same time by Disraeli. Carlyle having writ- 
ten his reply declining the offer, withheld it care- 
fully until the answer of Tennyson had been made 
known, fearing that the latter might in some degree 
be supposed to have been influenced by the course 
he himself had resolved to adopt. 

Some of Carlyle's earlier friends had been drawn 
to him by the dazzling attractions of " Sartor Kesar- 
tus." A contemporary writer reports of the audi- 
ences which attended the lectures on " Heroes " that 
"they chiefly consisted of persons of rank and 
wealth," and he added, " There is something in his 
manner which must seem very uncouth to London 
audiences of the most respectable class, accustomed 
as they are to the polished deportment which is usu- 
ally exhibited in "Willis's or the Hanover rooms." 
!N"ot a few of these Turveydrop folk fell back when 
they found whither that pillar of fire was leading 
them. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 71 

YII. 

Dr. John Carljle told me, with reference to the 
quaint framework of his brother's unique book (" Sar- 
tor Eesartus"), that he had no doubt it was suggested 
by the accounts he (Dr. 0.) used to give him of his 
experiences in Germany while pursuing his medical 
studies there. There was a Schelling Club, which 
Schelling himself used to visit now and then, de- 
voted to beer, smoke, and philosophy. The free, and 
often wild, speculative talks of these cloud-veiled 
(with tobacco-smoke) intelligences of the transcen- 
dental Olympus amused his brother Thomas much in 
the description and rehearsal, and the doctor said he 
recalled many of the comments and much of the 
laughter in "Sartor Resartus." Apart from this 
framework, there never was a book which came 
more directly from the heart and life of a man ; and 
being for that very reason a chapter of the world's 
experience, it was a word which came to its own only 
to find a slow reception. It was a long time before 
it could find a publisher — this great book into which 
five years of labor had gone — but at last (1833) Mr. 
Fraser consented to publish it in his magazine, much 
to the consternation of his readers. 

"When it began to appear," said Carlyle, "poor 
Fraser, who had courageously undertaken it, found 
himself in great trouble. The public had no liking 



72 THOMAS CABLYLE. 

whatever for that kind of thing. Letters lay piled 
mountain high on his table, the burden of them be- 
ing, * Either stop sending your magazine to me, or 
stop printing that crazy stuff about clothes.' I ad- 
vised him to hold on a little longer, and asked if 
there vrere no voices in a contrary sense. ' Just two 
— a Mr. Emerson, of New England, and a Catholic 
priest at Cork.' These said, * Send me Fraser so 
long as "Sartor" continues in it.'" Some years 
afterwards Carlyle visited Cork, and found out his 
Eoman Catholic reader, and he used to relate, with 
some drollery, how he was kept waiting for some 
time because the servant was unwilling to disturb 
him during some hours of penance and prayer with 
which he was engaged in the garden. " The inter- 
view did not amount to much." 

" Sartor Eesartus " first appeared in book form in 
New England (1835), edited by Emerson, to whom 
also is to be credited the collection of Carlyle's mis- 
cellaneous papers. Carlyle loved to dwell upon the 
recognition he had received from New England in 
the years when he was comparatively unknown in his 
own country. " There w^as really something mater- 
nal in the way America treated me. The first book 
I ever saw of mine, the first I could look upon as 
wholly my own, was sent me from that country, and 
I think it was the most pathetic event of my life 
when I saw it laid on my table. The 'French Rev- 



THOMAS CAHLYLE. 73 

olution,' too, which had alarmed everybody here, 
and brought me no penny, was taken up in America 
with enthusiasm, and as much as one hundred and 
fifty pounds sent to me for it." " Sartor Kesartus " 
and the " Miscellanies " were both published in Eng- 
land in book form in 1838, after their appearance in 
America. 

Mr. Carlyle was much urged about that time to 
visit the United States, and had intended to do so ; 
he was, I believe, only prevented from fulfilling 
his intention by the pressure of his labors on the 
"French Revolution" — more particularly by the 
necessity of reproducing the first volume of it, which 
had been burned by a servant-girl. 

There is a letter of which my reader will be glad 
to read a portion in this memoir, and in connection 
with what has been said concerning the home and 
circumstances amid which "Sartor Eesartus" was 
written. It is Carlyle's letter to Goethe, published 
in the latter's translation of the " Life of Schiller " 
(Frankfort, 1830): 

"You inquire Avith such warm interest respecting our present abode 
and occupations, that I feel bound to say a few words about both, 
while there is still room left. Dumfries is a pleasant town, contain- 
ing about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and may be considered the 
centre of the trade and judicial system of a district which possesses 
some importance in the sphere of Scottish industry. Our residence 
is not in the town itself, but fifteen miles to the northwest, among the 
granite hills and the black morasses which stretch westward through 

4 



74 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

Galloway almost to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and 
rock our estate stands forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly 
enclosed and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees afford a 
shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough -wooled sheep. 
Here, with no small effort, have we built and furnished a neat, sub- 
stantial dwelling ; here, in the absence of professorial or other office, 
we live to cultivate literature according to our strength, and in our 
own peculiar way. We wish a joyful growth to the rose and flowers 
of our garden ; we hope for health and peaceful thoughts to further 
our aims. The roses, indeed, are still in part to be planted, but they 
blossom already in anticipation. Two ponies, which carry us every- 
where, and the mountain air, are the best medicines for weak nerves. 
This daily exercise — to which I am much devoted — is my only recre- 
ation : for this nook of ours is the loveliest in Britain — six miles re- 
moved from any one likely to visit me. Here Rousseau would have 
been as happy as on his island of St. Pierre. My town friends, in- 
deed, ascribe my sojourn here to a similar disposition, and forbode me 
no good result. But I came hither solely with the design to simplify 
my way of life, and to secure the independence through which I could 
be enabled to remain true to myself. This bit of earth is our own ; 
here we can live, write, and think as best pleases ourselves, even 
though Zoilus himself were to be crowned the monarch of literature. 
Nor is the solitude of such great importance ; for a stage-coach takes 
us speedily to Edinburgh, which we look upon as our British Weimar. 
And have I not, too, at this moment piled up upon the table of my 
little library a whole cart-load of French, German, American, and 
English journals and periodicals — whatever may be their worth ? Of 
antiquarian studies, too, there is no lack. From some of our heights 
I can descry, about a day's journey to the west, the hill where Agric- 
ola and his Romans left a camp behind them. At the foot of it I 
was born, and there both father and mother still live to love me. And 
so one must let Time work. 

*' But whither am I wandering? Let me confess to you I am un- 
certain about ray future literary activity, and would gladly learn your 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 75 

opinion concerning it ; at least pray write to me again, and speedily, 
that I may feel myself united to you. The only piece of any import- 
ance that I have written since I came here is an ' Essay on Burns.* 
Perhaps you never heard of him, and yet he is a man of the most 
decided genius; hut born in the lowest rank of peasant life, and 
through the entanglements of his peculiar position was at length 
mournfully wrecked, so that what he eifected was comparatively un- 
important. He died, in the middle of his career, in the year 1796. 
We English, especially the Scotch, loved Burns more than any poet 
that had lived for centuries. I have often been struck by the fact 
that he was born a few months before Schiller, in the year 1759, and 
that neither of them ever heard the other's name. They shone like 
stars in opposite hemispheres, or, if you will, the thick mist of earth 
intercepted their reciprocal light." 

Goethe, commenting upon this letter, says that 
Burns was not unknown to him. He speaks in the 
highest terms of the exactness with which Carljle 
had entered into the life and individuality of Schil- 
ler, and of all the German authors whom he had in- 
troduced to his countrymen. He prefaces his trans- 
lation of the " Life of Schiller " with two pictures of 
the residence of Carlyle. In the year after the above 
letter was written, Mr. Carlyle wrote another letter 
to Goethe in reply to one from the latter, which I 
have not seen published in England, but is interest- 
ing as indicating the feeling in that country towards 
German literature up to the time at which he began 
his work. This letter was written on December 22, 
1829, and in it Carlyle says, " You will be pleased 
to hear that the knowledge and appreciation of for- 
eign, and especially of German, literature spreads 



76 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

with increasing rapidity wherever the English tongue 
rules ; so that now at the Antipodes, in New Holland 
itself, the wise men of your country utter their wis- 
dom. I have lately heard that even in Oxford and 
Cambridge, our two English universities, hitherto 
looked upon as the stopping-place of our peculiar 
insular conservatism, a movement in such things has 
begun. Your Niebuhr has found a clever translator 
at Cambridge, and at Oxford two or three Germans 
have already enough employment in teaching their 
language. The new light may be too strong for cer- 
tain eyes, yet no one can doubt the happy conse- 
quences that shall ultimately follow therefrom. Let 
nations, as individuals, only know each other, and 
mutual jealousy will change to mutual helpfulness; 
and instead of natural enemies, as neighboring coun- 
tries too often are, we shall all be natural friends." 

YIII. 

What Carlyle's parents hoped he would become — 
a preacher — that he was, in a far wider way than 
they could have anticipated. His casual, or even 
half-cynical, remarks, bearing on religious matters, 
were searching sermons. In Christmas week, he 
said to his friend William Allingham that he had 
observed an unusual number of drunken men in the 
street, and "then," he quietly added, "I remembered 
that it was the birthday of the Eedeemer." Car- 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 77 

lyle's very oaths were more devout than many ben- 
edictions. I have heard none of the " sham damns 
which disgust" (as Emerson said in his lecture on 
"Superlatives"), but great sentences pronounced on 
wrong with the solemnity of a foreman speaking for 
an invisible jury. Being in Scotland at the house of 
an old acquaintance, w^hom he knew to be a sceptic, 
Carlyle was shocked, when dinner came, by the com- 
plaisance with which his entertainer — evidently be- 
cause of the neighbors present — entered upon a sanc- 
timonious " grace-bef ore-meat " of the long Scotch 

pattern ; and cut it short by exclaiming, " Oh, , 

this is damnable !" 

I believe that a careful criticism of Carlyle's style 
of writing, which has puzzled so many, would show 
it to be largely a scholastic exaltation and expansion 
of the Dumfriesshire dialect. And when any com- 
prehensive statement of his religious position is made 
(if it ever is, which is doubtful), it will be found that 
the " reverences " which germinated at his mother's 
knee survived in hira the decay of their objects and 
symbols. Nay, even the old phrases were quaintly 
transfigured in the speech of this heretical Cove- 
nanter. He sometimes used the metaphors of Ge- 
henna in consigning dogmas about the same to the 
place where he thought they belonged. It was, I 
believe, the great pain of his life that he could reach 
no solid shore beyond the endless quicksands of ne- 



78 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

gation upon wliicli he had entered. He could not, 
with many of his friends, find any spiritual hope or 
significance in the theory of "Evolution," and his 
dislike of Comte's formulas repelled him from the 
"Church of Humanity." albeit the Evolutionists 
find texts enough in his own doctrine of Force, and 
the "Keligion of Humanity" may be equally said to 
have been heralded in the "Essay on Characteris- 
tics." However, in the matter of belief, here was 
a powerful warrior, courageous, perfectly equipped, 
without post to defend or battle to fight. 

" To what religion do I belong ?" wrote Schiller. 
"To none thou mightst name. And wherefore to 
none? Because of my religion." It was the fervor 
of Carlyle's religion which led him to turn away 
from the Scotch Church with a breaking heart : it 
was that which ignored each hallowed dome which 
for him shut out the vault of pure reason, beneath 
which he knelt with never-ceasing wonder and aspi- 
ration. He acknowledged that the English Church 
was " the apotheosis of decency," but they who look- 
ed upon its articles as the thirty-nine pillars of the 
universe were apt to find those pillars toppling upon 
them before this Samson. The sects, for him, re- 
mained to the end, each some small umbrella which 
its devotees imagined to be the vault of heaven. 
Many years ago he was persuaded by some friends 
in the south of England, whom he was visiting, to 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 79 

go to a Nonconformist chapel on Sunday. It was, I 
believe, for the first time in many years that he had 
entered either church or chapel, and was destined to 
be the last. " The preacher's prayer," he said, " filled 
me with consternation. ' O Lord, thou hast plenty 
of treacle up there ; send a stream of it down to us !' 
That was about the amount of it. He did not seem 
in the least to know that what such as he needed 
was rather a stream of brimstone. But this was onlv 
the vulgar form of what I have sometimes found be- 
neath the more refined phraseology of ' distinguished 
divines,' who, for the most part, know least of what 
they pretend to know most. What do such know 
of religion ? of the absolute veracity, the passionate 
love of truth and rectitude, unspeakable horror of 
the reverse, which a7'e Eeligion? How many of 
them are laboring to save the people from their real 
Satan — alcohol, which is turning millions of them 
into demons? The clergy are trying to make up for 
the vacancy left by the decay of all real Belief with 
theatrical displays, candles, and costumes. Every- 
thing goes to the theatre. ' Enter Christ !' That 
will soon be the stage-direction. But it is all another 
way of saying 'Exit Christ' — which states the fact 
more nearly. Charles I. established the English 
Church in order to keep his head on his shoulders. 
A good many support it now for the like reason, and 
with as little success. Undoubtedly there are some 



80 THOMAS CAKLTLE. 

good men in it. There is Frederic Maurice, one of 
the, most pious-minded men in England. He once 
wrote a novel called ' Eustace Conway :' he would 
like it suppressed : it is a key to him. A young man 
gets into mental doubts ; a priest comes and sprinkles 
moonshine over him, and then all is clear ! Alas, 
poor Sterling ! That is what happened to him for a 
little time. He got bravely through it ; but when he 
did, it became painfully evident to us that he was 
too fine and thin to live among us here." 

Carlyle is still thought by many people to have 
been severe and unsympathetic, and that this was 
owing to the despairing view of the world which 
he so often took. But I remember that, when our 
child died many years ago (we lonely in a foreign 
land), Carlyle came and sat with us ; and his tender- 
ness, his healing words, his inspiration of courage, 
made the one rainbow on that black cloud. True 
to his experience that in work alone could sorrow 
escape from its beleaguering cares, he, with kindly 
art, suggested to me a congenial literary task. Ah, 
when one was in grief and pain, what a providential 
heart he had ! "What sincerity with his wisdom, 
what bountifulness with his light and heat, and su- 
periority to those selfish pettinesses, small personal 
aims, which too often mingle their smoke with the 
fine flame of genius ! 

It was in speaking of our grief, and that of others. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 81 

that he said : " I still find more in Goethe about all 
high things than in any other. His gleams come 
now from a line, or even a word, or next a scrap of 
poetry. He did not believe in a gray-haired Sov- 
ereign seated in the heavens, but in the Supreme 
Laws. A loyal soul ! Concerning things unknown 
he has spoken the best word — Entsagung. In think- 
ing about immortality, we jump to selfish conclu- 
sions, and support them as if they were piety : even 
if we sanctify our conclusion by associating with it 
our departed friends and clinging affections, it is 
something you want. But nothing can be known. 
Goethe says — Entsagung. Submission! Renuncia- 
tion ! That is near to it. I studied the word long 
before I knew what he meant by it; but I know 
there is such a thing as rising to that state of mind, 
and that it is the best. Shall it be as I wish? It 
shall be as it is. So, and not otherwise. To any 
and every conceivable result the loyal man can and 
will adapt himself; face that possibility until he 
becomes its equal ; and when any clear idea is reach- 
ed, bend to that till it becomes ideal. Entsagung 
shall then mean, 'tis best even so !" 

A characteristic of Carlyle was his sympathetic 
interest in all animal life. Often when walking in 
the park he would pause to observe the sparrows 
which, hardly getting out of the way, would pertly 

turn their heads and look at him as landlords might 

4.* 



82 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

observe a suspicious character trespassing upon their 
estate. This seemed to amuse him much. He had 
always a severe anathema for vivisection, and all 
cruelty to animals. " !N^ever can I forget the horror 
with which I once saw a living mouse put into the 
cage of a rattlesnake in the Zoological Gardens, to be 
luncheon for that reptile. The serpent fixed upon 
it his hard glittering eyes, and the poor little creat- 
ure stood paralyzed, trembling with terror. It seem- 
ed to me a cruelty utterly unjustifiable, and one to 
be unceasingly protested against." The compassion 
of Burns for the field-mouse, whose home and hopes 
his plough had overthrown, was in Carlyle's tone of 
voice in this and much else that he said concern- 
ing his humble contemporaries of the animal world. 
No reader of " Sartor Resartus " can lose the image 
of the little bov at Ecclefechan, therein called En- 
tepfuhl, dreaming over the migration and return of 
the swallows. " Why mention our Swallows, which, 
out of far Africa, as I learned, threading their way 
over seas and mountains, corporate cities and bellig- 
erent nations, yearly found themselves, with the 
month of May, snug lodged in our Cottage Lobby ? 
The hospitable Father (for cleanliness' sake) had 
fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest: there 
they built, caught flies, and twittered, and bred; and 
all, I chiefly, loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, 
who taught you the mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 83 

gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social po- 
lice ? For if, by ill cliance, and when time pressed, 
your House fell, have I not seen five neighborly 
Helpers appear next day, and swashing to and fro, 
with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, and ac- 
tivity almost super-hir undine, complete it again be- 
fore nightfall ?" This picture rose again before me 
one day when Carlyle was speaking of an experi- 
ence of the philosopher Kant, when he was walking 
in a wood, near the wall of a ruin. He heard a 
clamor among the swallows, high up on the wall, so 
loud that it made him pause. The birds were in 
shrill debate about something. Presently there was 
a pause, then a long, low, plaintive note from one of 
them ; and immediately thereafter a nestling, not 
yet able to fly, fell to the ground. Kant concluded 
that the debate was that of a council which decreed 
that there was not nest-room or food enough for all 
the little ones ; one must be sacrificed ; and the one 
low, plaintive note was that of the mother submit- 
ting to the fatal conclusion. Kant picked up the 
fallen swallow, which was not yet dead, and looked 
into its eye. How deep it was ! As he gazed in it 
he seemed to be looking into an infinite depth, a 
mystical vista. " This struggle for existence," said 
Carlyle, " of which our scientific men say so much, is 
infinitely sad. We see it all around us. Our human 
reptiles are outcomes of it. Somebody told me of a 



84 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

subtle fellow, a small lad, who heard a poor rustic, 
warned to take care of his money in the crowd, say 
he had only a pound and meant to keep it in his 
mouth. Soon after the street-boy crosses the poor 
man's path, and sets np a cry, ' You give me my 
money !' A crowd having gathered, the boy explains 
that he had been sent by his poor mother with a 
sovereign to buy something, had fallen, and as the 
money rolled away the man had picked it up and 
put it in his mouth. The crowd cried ' Shame !' and 
he from the country had to disgorge and get home as 
he could. The story is credible of a boy struggling 
for existence in this vast abyss of greed and want. 
Survival of the fittest ! Much that they write about 
ft appears to me anything but desirable. I was read- 
ing lately some speculations which seemed to be fine 
white flour, but I presently found it was pulverized 
glass I had got into my mouth — no nourishment in 
it at all, but the reverse. What they call Evolution 
is no new doctrine. I can remember when Erasmus 
Darwin's 'Zoonomia' was still supplying subjects 
for discussion, and there was a debate among the 
students whether man were descended from an oys- 
ter or a cabbage. I believe the oyster carried the 
day. That the weak and incompetent pass away, 
while the strong and adequate prevail and continue, 
appears true enough in animal and in human histo- 
ry ; but there are mysteries in life, and in the uni- 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 85 

verse, not explained by that discovery. They should 
be approached with reverence. An irreverent mind 
is really a senseless mind. I have always said that 
I would rather have written those pages in Goethe's 
'Wilhelm Meister' about the * Three Reverences' 
than all the novels which have appeared in my day." 

IX. 

Notwithstanding his affection for Professor Tyn- 
dall, Carlyle, in scientific matters, clung to the great 
masters of the past, such as Faraday, for many years 
his personal friend, and Franklin. He often spoke 
of Franklin as America's greatest man, and told 
good anecdotes of him ; among others, one I had not 
heard, of his going to see a church-steeple at Streat- 
ham, near London, which had been struck by light- 
ning. Franklin predicted that, if rebuilt in the 
same way, the steeple would be again struck — and 
that was just what happened. 

The hostility which his father manifested towards 
all works of fiction (as " downright lies ") turned, in 
Carlyle, to the very severe standard of veracity by 
which he judged all such works. He had an admi- 
ration for Charles Dickens, especially after hearing 
that author read some of his own works. He could, 
he said, hardly recall any theatrical representation 
he had witnessed in which the whole company had 
exhibited more variety of effect than came from the 



86 THOMAS CAHLTLE. 

play of Dickens's voice and features. Thackeray 
was one of his friends during life. One evening he 
pointed out to me, when we were walking, an inn 
to which Thackeray once retired to escape calls and 
company when he had on hand a piece of work re- 
quiring special care and solitude. " I learned where 
he was by his sending around to our house for a 
Bible. Better work might come of the writers of 
books if they knew more of this working in secret 
with their Bible beside them. Some novelists of 
our time appear to think that study and veracity 
may be dispensed with in their art. I undertook to 
read a famous novel recently, in which a personage, 
a carpenter, is described as putting in the door-panel 
after the rest of the door was completed. The fa- 
mous novelist knew nothing at all about the making 
of a door. I got no farther with that book." 

On one occasion, a number of persons being pres- 
ent, a scholarly person (a nobleman) asked Carlyle 
his opinion concerning works of imagination, of 
high ability, but containing incidents not quite dec- 
orous — such books as "Tom Jones" and "Roder- 
ick Random." The main question was whether 
works of such character might safely be permitted 
to women. " Quite as safely as to men," said Car- 
lyle. "If the book is really valuable in other re- 
spects, I should advise them to read such and keep 
quiet about it." It is hardly to be wondered, when 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 87 

the woman who lived by his side is remembered, that 
Carljle made a clause in his conservatism (though a 
curiously cautious one) in favor of the women who 
were seeking medical education in Edinburgh Uni- 
versity. "While filling the office of Lord Rector, his 
opinion on that subject was asked by a friend there. 
The answer returned and privately used with good 
effect there, in the contest, was as follows : 

"5 Chetne Row, Chelsea, February 9, 1871. 

"Dear Sir, — It is with reluctance that I write anything to you 
on this subject of Female Emancipation which is now rising to such 
a height, and I do it only on the strict condition that whatever I say 
shall be private, and nothing of it get into newspapers. The truth 
is, the topic, for five-and-twenty years past, especially for the last 
three or four, has been a mere sorrow to me, one of the most afflicting 
proofs of the miserable anarchy that prevails in human society, and 
I have avoided thinking of it, except when fairly compelled. What 
little has become clear to me on it, I shall now endeavor to tell you. 

"In the first place, then, I have never doubted but the true and 
noble function of a woman in this world was, is, and forever will be, 
that of being a Wife and Helpmate to a worthy man, and discharging 
well the duties that devolve on her in consequence as mother of chil- 
dren and Mistress of a Household — duties high, noble, silently im- 
portant as any that can fall to a human creature; duties which, if 
well discharged, constitute woman, in a soft, beautiful, and almost 
sacred way, the Queen of the World, and which, by her natural fac- 
ulties, graces, strengths, and weaknesses are every way indicated as 
specially hers. The true destiny of a woman, therefore, is to wed a 
man she can love and esteem, and to lead noiselessly under his pro- 
tection, with all the wisdom, grace, and heroism that is in her, the 
life prescribed in consequence. 

"It seems, furthermore, indubitable that if a woman miss this 



88 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

destiny, or have renounced it, she has every right, before God and 
man, to take up whatever honest employment she can find open to 
her in the world. Probably there are several or many employments 
now exclusively in the hands of men for Avhich women might be more 
or less fit — printing, tailoring, weaving, clerking, etc. That medicine 
is intrinsically not unfit for them is proved from the fact that in much 
more sound and earnest ages than ours, before the medical profession 
rose into being, they were virtually the physicians and surgeons as 
well as sick-nurses — all that the world had. Their form of intellect, 
their sympathy, their wonderful acuteness of observation, etc., seem to 
indicate in them peculiar qualities for dealing with disease ; and evi- 
dently in certain departments (that of female disease) they have quite 
peculiar opportunities of being useful. My answer to your question, 
then, may be that two things are not doubtful to me in this matter. 

"1. That Women — any woman who deliberately so determines — 
have a right to study medicine ; and that it might be profitable and 
serviceable to have facilities, or at least possibilities, ofiered them for 
so doing. But — 

*'2. That, for obvious reasons. Female Students of Medicine ought 
to have, if possible. Female Teachers, or else an extremely select 
kind of men, and, in particular, that to have young women present 
among young men in anatomical classes, clinical lectures, or general- 
ly studying medicine in concert, is an incongruity of the first magni- 
tude, and shocking to think of to every pure and modest mind. 

" This is all I have to say ; and I send it to you, under the con- 
dition above mentioned, as a friend for the use of friends. 
"Yours sincerely, 

"T. Caklyle." 

The servant who burned the "French Kevolution " 
was in the employ of Mrs. Taylor, afterwards Mrs. 
Mill. " One day," said Carlyle, in relating this trag- 
edy, " Mill rushed in, and sat there, white as a sheet, 
and for a time was a picture of speechless terror. 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 89 

At last it came out, amid his gasps, that Mrs. Taylor, 
to whom he had lent the manuscript in whose prep- 
aration he had been much interested, had laid it on 
her study-table, when her servant-girl had found it 
convenient for lighting the fire; each day the vol- 
ume must have been decreasing, until one day, the 
lady coming in, found scattered about the grate the 
last burnt vestiges of the most difficult piece of 
work I had yet accomplished. The downright ago- 
ny of Mill at this catastrophe was such that for a 
time it required all our energies to bring him any 
degree of consolation ; for me but one task remain- 
ed in that matter : the volume was rewritten as w^ell 
as I could do it, but it was never the same book." 

" I used to see a good deal of Mill once, but we 
have silently — and I suppose inevitably — parted 
company. He was a beautiful person, affectionate, 
lucid ; lie had always the habit of studying out the 
thing that interested him, and could tell how he 
came by his thoughts and views. But for many 
years now I have not been able to travel with him 
on his ways, though not in the least doubtful of his 
own entire honesty therein. His work on ' Liberty ' 
appears to me the most exhaustive statement of pre- 
cisely that I feel to be untrue on the subject treated. 
But, alas ! the same discrepancy has become now a 
familiar experience. The Irishman is now about the 
' freest ' man in existence ; he is at liberty to sit him 



90 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

down on his dunghill and curse all creation; ^he 
clothes himself with curses as with a garment ;' yet 
what good does he or anybody else get by it all ?" 

In a letter written in 1832 (see Part III.) Carlyle 
speaks of Mill as " one of the best, clearest-headed, 
and clearest-hearted young men now living in Lon- 
don." 

John Stuart Mill always seemed to me to grow 
suddenly aged when Carlyle was spoken of. The 
nearest to painful emotion in him which I ever saw 
was when he made that remark, " Carlyle turned 
against all his friends." I did not and do not think 
the remark correct. When Carlyle came out with 
his reactionary opinions, as they were deemed, his 
friends became afraid of him, and nearly all stopped 
going to see him at the very time when they should 
have insisted on coming to a right understanding. 
Carlyle was not reserved in speaking of the change 
which had come over his convictions. "I used to 
go up stairs and down spouting the oratory of all 
radicals, especially the negro emancipationists. Nor 
have I the slightest doubt that such people have 
sometimes put an end to the most frightful cruelties. 
What worth they put into such work they reaped. 
But it steadily grew into my mind that of all the in- 
sanities that ever gained foothold in human minds, 
the wildest was that of telling masses of ignorant 
people that it is their business to attend to the reg- 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 91 

ulation of human society. I remember when Emer- 
son first came to see me that he had a great deal to 
say about Plato that was very attractive, and I began 
to look up Plato; but, amid the endless dialectical 
hair-splitting, was generally compelled to shut up the 
book, and say, ' How does all this concern me at all V 
But later on I have read Plato with much pleasure, 
finding him an elevated soul, spreading a pure at- 
mosphere around one as he reads. And I find him 
there pouring his scorn on the Athenian democracy 
— the charming government, full of variety and dis- 
order, dispensing equality alike to equals and un- 
equals' — and hating that set quite as cordially as 
the writer of the 'Latter-Day Pamphlets' hates the 
like of it now ; expressed in a sunny, genial way, 
indeed, instead of the thunder and lightning with 
which the pamphlet man was forced to utter it. 
Let Cleon, the shoemaker, make good shoes, and no 
man will honor him more than L Let Cleon go 
about pretending to be legislator, conductor of the 
world, and the best thing one can do for Cleon is to 
remand him to his work, and, were it possible, under 
penalties. And I demand nothing more for Cleon 
or Cufifee than I should be prepared to assert con- 
cerning the momentarily successful of such who have 
managed to get titles and high places. In that kind, 
for example, his Imperial Majesty l^apoleon Third — 
an intensified Pig, as, indeed, must some day appear." 



92 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

X. 

It became clear to my own mind, after a few 
months' acquaintance with Carljle, that he had in 
his mind a very palpable Utopia, one neither unlove- 
ly nor unjust, whose principles, if genuinely applied, 
would make ordinary Conservatives glad enough to 
accept those of Mill in preference. It was part of 
his view, for instance, that private proprietorship in 
land should be abolished ; and I well remember him 
building a long discourse on English " fee," Scotch 
" feu," as derived from foi^ fides, a trust, and des- 
tined to be that again when Cosmos replaced Chaos. 
The paper -nobility would stand small chance in 
his Commonwealth. It was they mainly who usurp 
the posts of highest work, for which they are in- 
competent, and keep the true kings, the Yoltaires, 
Burnses, Johnsons, in the exile of mere " talk." But 
I also felt that it was by a rare felicity that Marga- 
ret Fuller spoke of him as "the Siegfried of Eng- 
land — great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable." 
His vulnerable point was a painful longing to make 
present facts square with his theory and ideal. He 
could not bear to think the realization of his hope so 
distant as the world said. He had lived through the 
generation of bread riots. Chartism, Irish rebellions, 
trade-union strikes and rattenings, and longed for a 
fruitful land, with bread for all, work for all, each 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 93 

laborer provided for, disciplined, regulated — a great 
army of honest and competent toilers, making the 
earth blossom as a rose, and at the same time dwell- 
ing peacefully in patriarchally governed homes. If 
this could only be realized somewhere ! Then there 
reached him the tidings that in the Southern States 
of America there was such a fair country. I found 
him fully possessed with this idea in 1863. In his 
longing that his dream should be no dream, but a 
reality, he had listened to the most insubstantial rep- 
resentations. An enthusiastic Southern lady had 
repeatedly visited him, and found easy credence to 
her story that such was the inherent vitality of 
slavery, and the divine force attending it, that even 
then, when the South was blockaded, and harassed 
by war on every side, prosperity was springing up, 
and factories appearing. Southern theorists, indeed, 
there were as sincerely visionary as himself, and they 
came to him personally with a wonderful scheme, by 
which the South and the West Indies were to be con- 
stituted into one great nation, in which the physical 
beauty of the country would only be surpassed by 
the songs of the happy negroes working in their own 
natural clime, untainted by any of the mad, wild 
strife between labor and capital, the greed of pelf, or 
the ambitions of corrupt politics. As a Southern 
myself, I had another story to tell. A dream as fair 
had been driven from ray own heart and mind when 



94: THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

I was able to look beyond the peaceful homes of one 
or two small districts in my beloved Virginia to the 
actual condition of the average South, and I laid be- 
fore him the facts which had expelled that dream. 
One or two of the simplest facts which I narrated, 
on a day when we walked in Hyde Park, so filled 
him with wrath at the injustice perpetrated that his 
denunciations attracted the attention of loungers in 
the Park. I saw before me the same man that after- 
wards so deeply sympathized with the wronged Af- 
rican Langahelele, when Bishop Colenso came over 
from Natal to plead for him against English oppress- 
ors — the man whose voice has helped to arrest the 
schemes to obtain English aid for the European 
slave-trader, " the unspeakable Turk." 

Carlyle was always most patient when he was vig- 
orously grappled with about his facts, perhaps from 
a half-consciousness that there lay his weakness, and 
from a natural honesty of mind. Soon after David 
A. Wasson had written to him that stern and digni- 
fied paper which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, 
he asked me about Wasson, and remarked that he 
seemed to be " an honest, sturdy, and valiant kind of 
man." Subsequently I had the pleasure of introduc- 
ing to him the friendly but severe critic in question, 
and he was very genial in conversation with his 
American critic. 

Carlyle awakened from his dream of a beautiful 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 95 

patriarchal society in the Southern States slowly, 
but he did awake. One day he received from the 
Rev. Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia, as a reply to his 
"Ilias in ISTuce" (1863), a photograph taken of the 
lacerated back of a negro, with the words "Look 
upon this, and may God forgive your cruel jest !" 
He asked me about Dr. Furness, and I was able to 
give him an account w^hich relieved him from the 
suspicion that the picture was "got up" for partisan 
purposes. A good many things made him, as I 
thought, uneasy about his position in those days. 
But the staggering blow, dealt with all the force of 
love, came from Emerson. It was early in October, 
1864, that I found him reading and rereading a letter 
from Emerson. Long years before he had written to 
an American, " I hear but one voice, and that comes 
from Concord:" the voice had now come to him 
again, freighted with tenderness, but also with terri- 
ble truth. He bade me read the letter. It spoke of 
old friendship, conveyed kindest sympathies to Mrs. 
Carlyle — then an invalid — mentioned pleasantly a 
friend whom Carlyle had introduced, and spoke of 
the satisfaction with w^hich he had read the fourth 
volume of "Friedrich," especially the paramount 
fact he drew from it that many years had not yet 
broken any fibre of his force; *'a pure joy to me 
who abhor the inroads which time makes in me and 
my friends. To live too long is the capital misfort- 



96 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

une." Then Emerson's sentences turned to fire — 
fire in which love was quick as enthusiasm was burn- 
ing. He said he had lately lamented that he (Carlyle) 
had not visited America. It would have made it 
impossible that his name should ever be cited against 
the side of humanity, and would have shown him the 
necessities and aspirations struggling up in the free 
states, though but unsteadily articulated there. " The 
battle of Humanity is at this hour in America." He 
longed to enlist him with his thunderbolt on the 
right side. England should hold America stanch to 
her best tendency. Cannot the thoughtful minds 
of England see the finger -pointings of the gods 
which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and 
guide the wills of men ? Generals have carried to 
the field the same delusions as those which had mis- 
led so many Englishmen, until corrected by expe- 
rience. Every one has been wrong in his guess 
except good women who never despair of the ideal 
right. As for Carlyle himself, there must be some 
mistake; perhaps he was experimenting on idlers, 
etc. But he could not by any means be disguised 
from those eyes that saw deep ; they knew him bet- 
ter than he knew himself, perhaps, certainly better 
than others knew him ; and so Carlyle felt when he 
read in this letter, at the close, " Keep the old kind- 
ness, which I prize above words." 

"No danger but that will be kept," said Carlyle. 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 97 

" For the rest, this letter, the first I have received 
from Emerson this long time, fills me with astonish- 
ment. That the cleanest mind now living — for I 
don't know Emerson's equal on earth for perception 
— should write so is quasi-miraculous. I have tried 
to look into the middle of things in America, and I 
have seen a people cutting throats indefinitely to 
put the negro into a position for which all experience 
shows him unfit. Two Southerners have just been 
here. One of them, I should say, has some negro 
blood in him, and he said, quietly, the Southern- 
ers will all die rather than submit to reunion with 
the North. The other, a Mr. John K. Thompson, 
brought me an autograph letter from Stonewall 
Jackson." 

I knew Mr. Thompson, once editor of the Southern 
Literary Messenger, very well, and said that there 
could be no doubt whatever of his honor and sincer- 
ity. IS'o one could be more sensible than I was that 
there were in the South many excellent people, ear- 
nest and even religious believers in the system of 
slavery. It had been the heaviest tragedy of my 
personal life when I came to feel and know that so 
much heart and sincerity as that amid which I grew 
up in Virginia were pitted against all the necessary 
and irresistible currents and forces of the universe. 
My Virginian relatives and friends, or most of them, 
failed to get that point of view from outside which 



98 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

residence in free states had opened to me with per- 
sonally sorrowful results, and they could not see that 
the movement for emancipation in the United States 
was fed from world-wide sources. They thought 
me a traitor to them, I feared, though I would die 
to do them any service. They regarded the aboli- 
tionists as wicked, self-seeking men, and they were 
certainly therein proceeding against the fact and the 
truth. Was Emerson a wicked, self-seeking man ? I 
had known Emerson — refined, retiring, loving soli- 
tude, hating mobs — I have known: him for this cause 
face a wild mob ; and it was along with Garrison, 
Wendell Phillips, and others who had thrown away 
all self-interest and all popularity, to plead for jus- 
tice to the race most powerless to repay them. 

Carlyle said, after a long pause, and in the gentlest 
voice: "All the worth they or you have put into 
this thing will return to you. You must be patient 
with me when I say how it all appears to me. I 
cannot help admiring the !N"orthern people for their 
determination to maintain their Union. There is 
Abraham Lincoln " (taking up a photograph I had 
brought) ; " plainly a brave, sincere kind of man, 
who seemed to me crying to the country, * Come on !' 
without in the least knowing where he was leading 
them, or even with quiet doubts whether he might 
not be leading them to a struggle against the laws 
of this universe. The Americans will probably 



THOMAS CABLYLE. 99 

never believe it, but no man feels more profoundly 
interested and concerned for all he believes really 
for their good than the man who now speaks to you." 
On another occasion he said: '' !N"otwithstanding all 
the irritation which the Americans feel towards 
England, America owes a great deal to England ; a 
vast deal of English courage, wealth, literature, have 
gone to give America her start in the world ; and I 
have always believed it would be paid back, with 
compound interest, in the steady working out to 
demonstration of the utter and eternal impossibility 
of what Europe is pursuing under the name of De- 
mocracy. The Americans are powerful, but they 
cannot make two men equal when the universe has 
determined that they are and shall be unequal. 
They may pursue that road, and believe they are on 
the way to e/^-rusalem, but they shall find it Ge-hen- 
na that is finally arrived at. Nor can I doubt that 
an increasing number of men in America perceive 
this just as clearly as I do, whatever they may think 
of negro slavery. Many an intelligent American 
has told me in this room what evils their country 
has suffered from a vast mass of crass ignorant suf- 
frage; and I have even come to envy America her 
advantage over England, inasmuch as her democratic 
smash-up bids fair to precede ours, with little chance 
of preventing it. I believe it even probable that the 
rule of men competent to rule — as against both sham 



100 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

nobility and the ignorant populace — will be first es- 
tablished in the United States." 

He was talking in this way once when an eminent 
American clergyman was present, and the latter be- 
gan to defend with energy the right of every man 
to an equal vote. " Well," said Carlyle, " I do not 
believe that state can last in which Jesus and Judas 
have equal weight in public affairs." 

One evening I was trying to harmonize the posi- 
tive and negative poles, i. e., to make him admit the 
merit of certain passages in Walt Whitman. " Ah," 
he said, " I cannot like him. It all seems to be, * I'm 
a big man because I live in such a big country.' But 
I have heard of great men living in very small cor- 
ners of the earth. America will, perhaps, become 
a great as well as a big country; but it will have 
to learn from the experience and age of the world. 
The authorities of the world have always been the 
aged — the Senior, Senator, Sire ; I am told the In- 
dian Sachem means the same. 'Young America' 
must consider that." 

Carlyle was born among peasants, and knew too 
much of them, their ignorance and superstition, to 
believe that their suffrage could be trusted in govern- 
ment; at the same time, he had observed too much 
the nobility and gentry to believe that theirs w^as 
more trustworthy. The intellectual world was just 
entering on its phase of transcendentalism, which 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 101- 

emphasized the idea of individual "missions:" men 
were, greatest and smallest, " God-sent," their tasks 
organic. Rulers were, like poets, born — could not 
be made. The prophetic vision which Carljle had 
caught, amid intervals of pulpit - dulness, in Eccle- 
fechan kirk, when Christ should be on the throne and 
Satan chained in the pit, survived in his mature con- 
ception of the future. Against a democracy which 
would give Jesus and Judas equal votes, he set an 
order which would place the best man on the throne, 
and bind down the worst. To do that, he often said, 
was the only meaning of progress. " Harriet Mar- 
tineau, after she had come from America, used to 
talk about * progress ' to tediousness. It's doubtful 
whether there is any such thing in the sense ordi- 
narily meant. Before one rejoices in the expansion 
and progress of a thing, it might be well to inquire 
whether it is a good thing, or the reverse, which is 
so flourishing." 

It is notable that the heroes marked out for hom- 
age by Carlyle were chiefly from the humble rank 
from which he had himself sprung — Luther, Burns, 
Johnson, Heyne, Richter, Schiller, and others. Such 
was this great anti-democrat's tribute to the common 
people, and even the poorest. It could only have 
been owing to the unhappy causes already intimated 
that he did not add to the list of those lowly-born he- 
roes the man who, of all his contemporaries, perhaps 
had the best right to be there — Abraham Lincoln. 



102 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

XL 

"When the poet Longfellow called at Chelsea with 
an introduction from Emerson, Carlyle told him that 
Emerson's coming to him at Craigenputtoch was 
" like the visit of an angel." Emerson's letter now 
came, after a generation had passed, as the voice of 
Carlyle's good angel. J^ever again, after that letter 
(of October, 1864), did I hear Carlyle speak with his 
former confidence concerning the issue in America. 
As time went on, I could perceive an increase of 
attentiveness in his manner towards Americans, and 
he seemed to be touched by the evidence that their 
faith in him and love for him were in nowise shaken 
by anything he had said or written — not even by 
his "Ilias in Nuce." Among the Americans who 
visited him in the latter years of his life were George 
Hipley, Samuel Longfellow, David "Wasson, Went- 
worth Higginson, Mr. and Mrs. Forbes, and Profess- 
or Charles Norton.'^^^Concerning each of these and 
others I have heard him speak in a tone which indi- 
cated a quiet revolution going on in his mind. It 
was a rare thing at these interviews to hear any dis- 
cussion of the questions raised in Emerson's letter, 
though Carlyle generally "bore his testimony" 
against democracy. But his esteem for America and 
Americans steadily grew, and his eyes seemed again 
turning with hope to the West, as in his youth when 
lie thought of going to dwell there. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 103 

ITever can I forget the conversation between Car- 
Ijle and Bajard Taylor, when the latter visited Lon- 
don on his way to take his place as minister at Ber- 
lin. Several years before, Bayard had called upon 
Carlj^le, and audaciously announced that he meant to 
write the Life of Goethe. The old man could not 
allow any such liberties to be taken with his literary 
hero without a challenge, and set a sort of trap for 
this ambitious American. '' But," said he, " are there 
not already Lives of Goethe ? There is Blank's Life 
of Goethe : what fault have you to find with that ?" 
The tone was that Blank had exhausted the subject. 
Bayard immediately began showing the inadequacy 
and errors of Blank's book, and withal his own mi- 
nute and critical knowledge of Goethe, when Carlyle 
broke out with a laugh, saying of the Life he had 
mentioned, " I couldn't read it through." From that 
moment he was cordial, and recognized the man be- 
fore him. And now when Bayard was once again 
here, and the opportunity to ^bkieve the great work 
he had undertaken seemed to be within reach, he 
called upon Carlyle again. TVe found Carlyle in the 
early afternoon alone, and reading. He presently 
remembered the previous call which the young au- 
thor had made upon him, and congratulated him that 
he belonged to a country which preferred to be rep- 
resented abroad by scholars and thinkers rather than 
by professional diplomatists. He at once inquired 



104 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

how he was getting on with his Life of Goethe, re- 
marking that such a work was needed. Bayard told 
him of a number of new documents of importance 
which the Germans had intrusted to him. The two 
at once entered upon an interesting consultation con- 
cerning the knotty points in Goethe's history. He 
referred to Bayard's translation of " Faust ;" with a 
good-natured smile, he said, " Yours is the twentieth 
version of that book which their authors have been 
kind enough to place on my shelves. You have 
grappled, I see, with the second part. My belief 
increasingly has been that when Goethe had got 
through with his ' Faust ' he found himself in pos- 
session of a vast quantity of classical and mediseval 
lore, demonology and what not; it was what he 
somewhere called his Walpurgis Sack, which he 
might some day empty ; and it all got emptied, in 
his artistic way, in Part II. Such is my present 
impression." At length Carlyle's brougham was an- 
nounced, and he must take his customary drive ; but 
he was evidently sorry to give up this interview. 
He entered upon an impressive monologue about 
Goethe, which ended with a repetition of the first 
verses of the Freemason's Song. His voice trembled 
a little when he came to the lines — 

"Stars silent rest o'er us; 
Graves under us silent." 

" 1^0 voice from either of those directions !" he said. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 105 

with a sigh. Then Bayard took up the strain, and 
in warm, earnest tones repeated the remaining verses 
in his perfect German. Carlyle was profoundly 
moved. He grasped Taylor's hand, and said, " Shall 
I see you again ?" The other answered that he must 
immediately leave England, but hoped to return be- 
fore long. Carlyle passed down to his carriage, but 
just as he was about driving off made the driver 
halt, and signalled to us to come near. He said to 
Bayard, " I hope you will do your best at Berlin to 
save us from further war in Europe;" and then, 
after a moment's silence, " Let us shake hands once 
more ; we are not likely to meet again. I wish you 
all success and happiness." 

jSTo man was more free from personal pride than 
Carlyle, or more ready to confess his error when it 
was proven such. In early da3^s he had retracted 
his sarcasms upon Sir Robert Peel, when he found 
that statesman possessed of the courage to turn 
against his own party in order to redress a great 
wrong suffered by the people. He had said sharp 
things of Palmerston too, but when that Premier 
died I remember his words — " Good-bye, old friend ; 
I shall perhaps live, at any rate England will live, 
long enough to see many uglier men occupying your 
place !" He confessed that he had been mistaken 
about Frederick the Great. The freethinking mon- 
arch, and friend of Yoltaire, had loomed up before 

.5* 



106 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

him as a hero; but as that biography, which has 
given to the world such a grand chapter of history, 
proceeded, Frederick was found to be no worshipful 
man ; and he said to Yarnhagen von Ense that he 
had no satisfaction in writing the book — "only la- 
bor and sorrow. What the devil had I to do with 
your Friedrich ?" It is my belief that it was mainly 
through his absorption in that heavy task that Car- 
lyle was so easily misled about the struggle in 
America. But this mistake he also discovered and 
confessed. An American lady, Mrs. Charles Lowell, 
whose noble son was one of those Harvard youths 
that fell in the war, sent Carlyle the Harvard Me- 
morial volume. The old man perused this volume 
with close attention, and became aware that there 
had been in the Northern soldiers a spirit and pur- 
pose which he had failed to recognize. When, at 
length, Mrs. Low^ell personally came to see him, he 
said, as he took her hand, and even with tears, " I 
doubt I have been mistaken." 

Those who have regarded Carlyle as a mere wor- 
shipper of force have formed a superficial judgment. 
What Carlyle really worshipped was work ; his motto 
to the last was Laborare est orare / and his idea of 
work was a spiritual force turning some bit of chaos 
into order. In the hard hand of toil he saw a sceptre 
nobler than that of many a monarch organizing dis- 
order. He who could denounce I^apoleon III. when 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 107 

the most powerful emperor in Europe, defended 
Mazzini while he was the most helpless exile in Eu- 
rope. He who defended Governor Ejre in the belief 
that he had saved Jamaica from wholesale massacre 
was equally resolute in his sympathy with the Zulus 
when he saw them assailed by English troops. He 
never took the side of mere success. He had no 
sympathy with imperialism. One of his latest pub- 
lic acts was to protest against the proposition to 
raise, in Westminster Abbey, a memorial to Prince 
Louis ]^apoleon, slain by the Zulus. While he has 
been popularly credited with admiration for military 
leaders, England has not begun a war, from the Cri- 
mean to the Afghan, in which he was not opposed to 
his own country. 

'No man was a stronger hater of tyranny. He re- 
joiced in the American Revolution, and also in the 
story of the Dutch as related by Motley — a histo- 
rian of whose works he spoke very warmly indeed. 
"Those Dutch are a strong people. They raised 
their land out of a marsh, and went on for a long 
period of time breeding cows and making cheese, 
and might have gone on w^ith their cows and cheese 
till doomsday. But Spain comes over and says, 'We 
want you to believe in St. Ignatius.' ' Yery sorry,' 
replied the Dutch, ' but we can't.' ^ God ! but you 
must,^ says Spain ; and they went about with guns 
and swords to make the Dutch believe in St. Igna- 



108 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

tius — never made tliem believe in liirn, but did suc- 
ceed in breaking their own vertebral column for- 
ever, and raising the Dutch into a great nation." 
Louis JSTapoleon was simply a " swindler who found 
a people ready to be swindled." I thought he looked 
with favor upon the new French Eepublic, but feared 
that the people of that country were of a kind to 
forget the terrible experience they had with the man 
of Sedan. " They are liable to fits of depression in 
which they seem driven to madness. Just now they 
are in their other mood of exaltation, and the fine 
qualities they possess shine out. But it is a danger- 
ous experiment to suddenly break the chains of an 
ignorant population." 

Speaking of the " mere worship of force," which 
had been attributed to him, he said : " Most of that 
which people call force is but the phantasm of it, 
not reverend in the slightest degree to any sane 
mind. Here is some small unnoted thing silently 
working, or for the most part invisibly, in which 
lies the real force. Plenty of noise and show of 
power around us. Men in the pulpits, platforms, 
street corners, crying (as I hear it), ' Ho ! all ye that 
wish to be convinced of the thing that is not true, 
come hither ;' but the quietly true thing prevails at 
last. I admire Phocion there among those highly 
oratorical Athenians. Demosthenes says to him, 
• The Athenians will get mad, and kill you some 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 109 

day.' * Yes,' says Phocion — ' me when they are mad, 
you when they are in their senses.' They sent Pho- 
cion to look after Philip, who was coming against 
them. Phocion returned and told them they could 
do nothing against Philip, and had better make peace 
with him. All the tongues began to wag and abuse 
him. Phocion quietly broke his staff, and cast the 
pieces to them. Let me be out of it altogether! 
Demosthenes and the orators had it their own way, 
and the Athenians were defeated. They then had 
to go to Phocion to get them out of the trouble as 
well as he could. I think of all this when they tell 
me Mr. So-and-so has made a tremendous speech. If 
I had my way with that eloquent man, I should say 
to him, ^Have you yourself done, or tried to do, any 
of these fine things you talk about V ' Done T he 
would most likely have to say ; ' quite the reverse. 
The more I say them, the less need have I to do 
them.' Then I would just snip a little piece of that 
eloquent tongue off. And the next time he made an 
eloquent speech, I would put to him the same ques- 
tion, and when the like reply came, I would snip an- 
other small piece of his tongue off. And in the end 
very little, most likely nothing at all, of that eloquent 
tongue would be left. If he could not then act, at 
least my fine orator could be silent. The strongest 
force in Europe just now — Bismarck — is the silent- 
est. He completes the slow work of seven hundred 



110 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

years, but neither with tongue nor pen. 'Not the least 
service he is doing Europe, could the people give 
right heed to it, might be regarded his demonstra- 
tion that most of the ruling men esteemed as power- 
ful are only wind-bags. The utmost strain of their 
power seems to be to keep themselves one day more 
in their pleasurable places; that exhausts them. 
Mere egoism, and that of the paltry kind. It might 
be an adequate provision for such should a fit num- 
ber of flunkeys be employed, as in the case of a high 
personage Yoltaire tells about, to go every morning 
and bow to thera, and say. How very great and no- 
ble your Excellency is! How much reason your 
Excellency has to be satisfied with Himself !" 

I should remark that this was said long before 
Prince Bismarck was suspected of conniving with 
Catholic reactionists. (He used to remember that the 
German Chancellor's name etymologically meant the 
" Bishop's limit.") Since then I never heard Carlyle 
mention him. Carlyle might scold the Socialists, but 
his hatred was reserved for Jesuitism — which, how- 
ever, did not mean, on his lips, simply a papal Order, 
but always that false Spirit arraigned in his " Latter- 
day Pamphlets." On an occasion when some one was 
denouncing Jesuitism, I remember his scrutinizing 
the speaker rather severely, and asking him " where- 
abouts he could lay his hand upon anything free 
from Jesuitism in what is called religion nowadays ?" 



THOMAS CAELYLE. HI 

XII. 

Carljle has suffered much from having his humor- 
ous exaggerations taken, as one might saj, underfoot 
of the letter. If the parties of progress have been 
misled by this kind of interpretation, still more have 
those been mistaken who have inferred from his 
anti-democratic utterances a disposition to court tlie 
aristocracy. When, in the latter years of his life, 
some of high rank, who had forgotten, or had never 
read, what he used to w^ite about " paper-nobility," 
began to make much of Carlyle, his tone occasion- 
ally showed that he remembered another story of his 
favorite Phocion, how when the Athenian Assem- 
bly applauded, he turned to his friends and asked 
"what bad thing he had let slip." When the Em- 
peror of Germany sent him the Order for Civil Merit 
(founded by Frederick the Great), he did not refuse 
it, though he did not care for, and, I believe, never 
acknowledged it ; but, as the world knows, he would 
not accept the patronage at home, which might im- 
ply an admission that honest thought is to be paid in 
royal decorations. He had not worked for such wage, 
and would not receive it. When, about the time in 
which the German honor to the biographer of Fred- 
erick came. Queen Victoria sought an interview with 
him, he met her at the residence of the Dean of 
Westminster, and her Majesty became aware that 



112 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

slie was ill the presence of a man beyond all fictions 
of etiquette when he said, " Your Majesty sees that I 
am an old man, and, if you will allow me to be seat- 
ed, I may perhaps be better able to converse." The 
Queen bowed assent, but she had never before con- 
versed with one of her subjects on such terms of 
equality. This interview took place March 4, 1869. 
There were present the Duchess-Dowager of Athole 
(in waiting on the Queen); the Princess Louise, "de- 
cidedly a very pretty young lady, and clever too ;" 
Sir Charles and Lady Lyell ; Mr. and Mrs. Grote ; 
and Robert Browning; besides the Dean and Lady 
Augusta Stanley. Carlyle entertained the Queen 
with a graphic account of the antiquarian and mod- 
ern associations of the region where he was born, 
concerning which she inquired, and of Carlisle (" Caer 
Lewel, about the same age as Solomon ") ; also with 
much pleasant talk of Berlin and Potsdam. He told 
Majesty about his grandfather's ride in old times to 
Glasgow, when a man worth ten thousand pounds 
was considered a Croesus, when the people sang 
psalms and the streets were silent at 9.30 P.M. — 
"hard, sound, presbyterian root of what has now 
shot up into a hemlock-tree," to which Majesty re- 
sponded with a soft, low - voiced politeness which 
pleased Carlyle well. He went to the interview by 
the underground railway, and by the same convey- 
ance " was home before seven, and out of the adven- 
ture with no more than a headache." 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 113 

When the decoration of the Grand Cross of Bath 
was offered and declined, the throne, the ministry, 
and the people heard once more from the vicinity 
of Ayr the brave song : 

"A prince can mak a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon his miglit — 

Guid faith he maunna fa' that4— --^ 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Their dignities, and a' that, 
The pith o' sense, and prido o' worth, 

Are higher ranks than a' that." 

Carlyle was sensible of a certain magnanimity in 
Disraeli's proffer of this honor, for he had written 
some severe things about the Prime-minister. The 
two men had never been introduced to each other. 
Disraeli perhaps thought that Carlyle remembered 
an early satire he had written upon him, which was 
not the case, Carlyle being always utterly free from 
personal resentments of that kind. Their point of 
nearest contact was when they were sitting together 
upon the late Lord Derby's commission of the Na- 
tional Portrait Gallery. On that occasion the por- 
trait of Lord Brougham (he still living) was offered, 
and though all present felt that the acceptance of it 
would be a bad precedent — since politicians might 
utilize the gallery to advance their fame — yet all 
hesitated to oppose the offer save one. Carlyle rose 



114 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

np and said that, " since tlie rest hesitated, he begged 
leave to move that the Brougham picture be for the 
present rejected." The motion was adopted ; and 
Disraeli left his seat, went round to where Carlyle 
was, and stood before him for a few moments, utter- 
ing no word, but fairly beaming npon the only man 
who had the courage to do that which all felt to be 
right. 

Disraeli's letter to Carlyle was not merely munifi- 
cent — offering not only the order, but also what sum 
of money might be desired to support it — but it 
was expressed with the finest taste and feeling. The 
order was fixed on because it had been kept more 
pure than others ; and " since you, like myself, are 
childless," wrote the Premier, the common baronetcy 
seemed less appropriate. Carlyle wrote an equally 
courteous and noble reply in declining. Carlyle in- 
troduced Emerson to the English public as the sin- 
gular American "who did not want to be Presi- 
dent," and he must now himself be recorded as the 
eccentric Briton who did not want to be decorated. 
One honor Carlyle did value — the naming of a green 
space in Chelsea " Carlyle Square." 

On Saturday, December 4, 1875, when Carlyle com- 
pleted his eightieth year, a number of his friends 
and others variously representing literature united in 
an address to him as follows : 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 115 



TO THOMAS CAELYLE. 

"Z)0C. 4, 1875. 

" Sir, — We beg leave, on this interesting and memorable anniver- 
sary, to tender you the expression of our most respectful good wishes. 

"Not a few of the voices which would have been dearest to you to 
hear to-day are silent in death. There may perhaps be some com- 
pensation in the assurance of the reverent sympathy and affectionate 
gratitude of many thousands of living men and women throughout 
the British Islands and elsewhere, who have derived delight and in- 
spiration from the noble series of your writings, and who have noted 
also how powerfully the world has been influenced by your great per- 
sonal example. A whole generation has elapsed since you described 
for us the hero as a man of letters. We congratulate you and our- 
selves on the spacious fulness of years which has enabled you to sus- 
tain this rare dignity among mankind in all its possible splendor and 
completeness. It is a matt er for general rejoicing that a teacher whose 
genius and achievements have lent radiance to his time still dwells 
amidst us; and our hope is that you may yet long continue in fair 
health, to feel how much you are loved and honored, and to rest in the 
retrospect of a brave and illustrious life. 

*' We request you to do us the honor to accept the accompanying 
copy of a medal designed by Mr. J. E. Boehm, which has been struck 
in commemoration of the day." 

The medal bears on one of its faces a medallion of 
Mr. Carljle, by Mr. Boehm, and on the obverse the 
words — " In Commemoration. Dec. 4, 1875." Sil- 
ver and bronze copies were struck for the use of the 
subscribers, with a few for presentation to public in- 
stitutions. The copy Mr. Carljle was requested to 
accept was in gold. 



116 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

The inhabitants of Chelsea had for many years 
become familiar with Carlyle's unique figure, as he 
took his daily and nightly walks ; and when one of 
his friends, under a mistake, publicly stated that he 
(Carlyle) had been treated with disrespect by the 
younger plehs around him, the author as publicly de- 
clared the reverse to be true. The only case of this 
kind which I ever heard of was one in which some 
fine ladies were the offenders. He stumbled and 
nearly fell over some obstruction in the street. The 
ladies, who happened to be passing, laughed. Car- 
lyle, removing his hat, bowed low to them, and went 
on his way. 

XIII. 

Carlyle never thoroughly enjoyed Art. Had that 
side of him not been repressed in early life, his last 
years had been happier. He had, indeed, on his 
walls some valuable pictures, but they were por- 
traits, or pictures which had got ther-e for some 
other reason than that they were works of art. I 
have never doubted that he quietly included the fine 
arts in the ban he placed upon rhymed poetry, and 
that his early bias against all such things was pre- 
cisely reported in Sterling's portrait of him in " The 
Onyx Ring." "You," says Collins to Walsingham, 
" you for whose pipings and madrigals the world has 
smooth and favorable ears, had you the heart of a 
man, instead of the fancy of a conjurer, might find 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 117 

or make the sad hour for speaking severe truths. 
You might inspirit and shame men into the work of 
painfully building up new and graver and serener 
hopes, instead of lulling them into a drunken dream 
with wanton airs and music." Walsingham replies, 
" One builds cjclopean walls ; another fashions mar- 
ble carvings. Each must work as he can. But re- 
member that the cyclopean walls, though they stood 
indeed, and stand, became useless monuments of a 
dead past ; and the fox and the robber kennel among 
the stones. The marble carvings, which humanized 
their own early age, are still the delight of all hu- 
mane generations." The voice of Carlyle is cer- 
tainly in the rejoinder of Collins. " Ay, but those 
marble carvings, for those who wrought and revered 
them, were holy realities. Our modern poems and 
other tinsel-work are for us mere toys, as musical 
snuff-boxes or gauze flowers." He admired Shake- 
speare as a hero, but could hardly forgive him for not 
having written a history of England ; and his tone 
about the devotion of Goethe and Schiller to the 
stage was sometimes apologetic! I do not remember 
to have heard him speak at all of the great paint- 
ers and sculptors. He was impatiently, and always, 
searching for realities, albeit so many of them, when 
found, were dry and dusty. I have heard that when 
he first came to London he had a prejudice even 
against portraits.- Count d'Orsay was only able 



118 THO^IAS CAELYLE. 

(1839) to make his clever sketch half -surreptitiously. 
Much difficulty the artists had in persuading him to 
sit for a picture. The first to coax him in that di- 
rection was his early neighbor, Maclise — a good work 
of art, but evidently by an artist who knew hardly 
more than the rest of the world at that time (1833) 
the man he was delineating on canvas. Samuel 
Laurence, who interpreted so many good heads in 
America, drew a good one of Carlyle, published in 
the American edition of his " Miscellanies." One of 
the most notable pictures of him is that least known, 
by Madox Brown. This excellent artist designed a 
picture of " Work," in which he desired to introduce 
the Rev. Frederic D. Maurice as a working-man's 
friend, and Carlyle as the Prophet of Work. He 
had no difficulty with Maurice, but Carlyle refused 
to sit, and could barely be persuaded to accompany 
the artist to South Kensington, and stand against a 
rail while a photographer took the full-length which 
Madox Brown needed. Carlyle made a grimace, 
however, and said, "Can I go now?" The picture 
represents builders busy on the street; some fash- 
ionably dressed ladies are picking their way past the 
' bricks and mortar ; Maurice looks on meditatively, 
and with some sadness in his face, at this continu- 
ance of the curse, " In the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat thy bread ;" while Carlyle rejoices in it, 
and, leaning on his cane, laughs heartily — this laugh 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 119 

being the outcome of the grimace which he left on 
the photograph. Few of his portraits are satisfac- 
tory, partly, no doubt, because of the somewhat mis- 
erable look which spread over his face whenever he 
was induced to sit for his portrait. However, he 
gradually gained a respect for the artist's work, and 
expressed a childlike surprise and pleasure at seeing 
his face emerge from the chaos of pigments. Per- 
haps the best picture of him as a young man was that 
taken by Count d'Orsay, soon after the publication 
of " Sartor Resartus." A fairly satisfactory picture 
of him is that by Robert Tait, owned by Lady Ash- 
burton, "An Interior at Chelsea." The portrait by 
(jr. F. Watts is too gloomy ; that made by Whistler 
is a powerful work, but makes the author, as he sits 
in a rude chair, hat in hand, too much like a beggar 
at a church door. At request of his friend, Lady 
Ashburton, Carlyle sat for the sculptor, Thomas 
Woolner. It was a very difficult work ; Carlyle was 
now an image of still agony, and now all fluent 
spirit. The sculptor said it was like trying to model 
a flame. He has achieved the best success in that 
direction of art. Woolner's bust is powerful, but 
the better part of Carlyle cannot be suggested in 
marble; granite would be a better medium. Hap- 
pily, about two years before Carlyle's death, his 
friend Mrs. Helen Allingham was able to make 
sketches of him from time to time, in his own 



120 THOMAS CAULYLE. 

liome, without interfering with his ways. In her 
beautiful art the last years of Carlyle are preserved ; 
he is seen reading, smoking, conversing, meditating, 
and even asleep. It is to be hoped that the literary 
art of her husband, the poet — so long intimate with 
Carlyle — may some day give the world from his 
memory companion-pictures to these. 

Carlyle had much admiration for his neighbor 
John Leech, and thoroughly enjoyed his cartoons in 
Punch. When that master of caricature died pre- 
maturely of a nervous disorder, from which it was 
thought he might have recovered but for the organ- 
grinders, Carlyle, who suffered from the same frater- 
nity, mingled with his sorrow for Leech some severe 
sermons against that kind of liberty which "permit- 
ted Italian foreigners to invade London, and kill 
John Leech, and no doubt hundreds of other nervous 
people, who die and make no sign." John Leecli 
was doing his work thoroughly well, and that is the 
only liberty worth anything. Carlyle did not attend 
the theatre. I have sometimes suspected that there 
was in him some survival of the religious horror of 
theatres which prevailed at Annandale. He went to 
hear Charles Dickens read his works, and enjoyed 
that extremely. '' I had no conception, before hear- 
ing Dickens read, of what capacities lie in the human 
face and voice. JSTo theatre-stage could have had 
more players than seemed to flit about his face, and 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 121 

all tones were present. There was no need of any 
orchestra." Sucli enjoyments were very rare, how- 
ever, as, indeed, they were poor beside the scenery 
of history, the heroic figures of great men, and the 
world drama, on which the eye of Carlyle never 
closed. The dramatic and other arts came within 
his reach too late in life. He had passed the age 
when he could enjoy them for beauty or turn them 
to use ; and when the further age came, and the fee- 
bleness which the arts might have beguiled, he had 
no pleasure in them. 

XIY. 

Carlyle's was not only an essentially religious mind, 
but even passionately so. His profound reverence, 
his ever-burning flame of devout thought, made him 
impatient of all such substitutes for these as dogmas 
and ceremonies — the lamps gone out long ago. There 
was a sort of divine anger that filled him whenever 
forced to contemplate selfishness and egotism in the 
guise of humility and faith. 

When Emerson was on one of his earlier visits to 

England, large numbers of ^ne gentlemen whom he 

met desired him to introduce them to Carlyle. Some 

of these were crack-brained egoists, others actuated, 

as he saw, by curiosity, and he saved such from the 

catastrophes they invited by saying, mildly, " Why 

should you wish to have aquafortis thrown over 

6 



122 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

you?" In one case Emerson's name introduced to 
him a vegetarian, with whom Carljle went to walk. 
Unfortunately, his companion expatiated too much 
upon his then favorite topic, upon which Carlyle 
broke out with, " There's Piccadilly ; there it has 
been for a hundred years, and there it will be when 
you and your damned potato-gospel are dead and 
forgotten." He was more patient in listening to 
Miss Bacon, also introduced by Emerson, when she 
tried to persuade him that Shakespeare's plays were 
written by Lord Bacon. Carlyle never thought very 
much of the philosopher who had been unable to 
recognize such a contemporary as Kepler ; and his 
only reply to Miss Bacon was, " Lord Bacon could as 
easily have created this planet as he could have writ- 
ten ' Hamlet.' " I have heard that when she had gone 
he added to a letter written to his friend in Concord 
the brief postscript, " Your woman's mad. T. C." 
He was apt to meet a new-comer as he met Bayard 
Taylor, with a challenge, but knew how to yield 
gracefully when he found an able man. One even- 
ing a German philologist came, who said he had 
come over to investigate " the roots of the Welsh 
language." Carlyle said " if a cartload of those roots 
were brought to his door, he wouldn't give sixpence 
for them." But the German persisted with his talk 
about roots, and in ten minutes Carlyle was absorbed 
in the matter and bringing out his vast lore of old 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 123 

Scotch and Gaelic words, until at length the philol- 
ogist went off enriched with a " cartload " of impor- 
tant facts. An English Unitarian who sought to en- 
list him in a scheme for a I^ew Universal Church 
fared badlj. Carlyle never liked Unitarianism, re- 
garding it as a competitive variety of that Colerid- 
gean "moonshine" devised by and for those who 
had not the courage of their principles. " If so far, 
why not farther ?" He preferred Quakerism, the 
one religion before which Voltaire bowed his head. 
It was often the case that Carlyle's attack was a 
feint; if he met with a sturdy defence, implying 
character, he knew how to surrender graciously. A 
man once came in saying he had been studying Car- 
lyle's books, and was convinced by them that every 
man had some work to do in the world; he had 
come to ask help in trying to find out what his own 
work was. " Ye're a great fool," exclaimed Carlyle, 
" to come to me to learn what you have got to find 
out with your heart's blood !" A modest and forci- 
ble reply, however, cleared the way for a good con- 
versation. With men who were making sacrifices 
for a cause Carlyle was not only patient, but sympa- 
thetic, even when he was opposed to their cause. 
On the day of Mazzini's death Carlyle talked with a 
good deal of feeling about him. " I remember well 
when he sat for the first time on the seat there, 
thirty -six years ago. A more beautiful person I 



124 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

never beheld, with his soft flashing eyes and face 
full of intelligence. He had great talent — certainly 
the only acquaintance of mine of anything like equal 
intellect who ever became entangled in what seemed 
to me hopeless visions. He was rather silent, spoke 
chiefly in French, though he spoke good English 
even then, notwithstanding a strong accent. It was 
plain he might have taken a high rank in literature. 
He wrote well, as it was — sometimes for the love of 
it, at others when he wanted a little money ; but 
he never wrote what he might had he devoted 
himself to that kind of work. He had fine tastes, 
particularly in music. But he gave himself up as a 
martyr and sacrifice to his aims for Italy. He lived 
almost in squalor. His health was poor from the 
first ; but he took no care of it. He used to smoke 
a great deal, and drink coffee with bread crumbled 
in it; but hardly gave any attention to his food. 
His mother used to send him money; but he gave 
it away. When she died, she left him as much as 
two hundred pounds a year — all she had; but it 
went to Italian beggars. His mother was the only 
member of his family who stuck to him. His father 
soon turned his back on his son. His only sister 
married a strict Roman Catholic, and she herself be- 
came too strict to have anything to do with him. 
He did see her once or twice; but the interviews 
were too painful to be repeated. He desired, I am 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 125 

told, to see lier again when he was dying ; but she 
declined. Poor Mazzini ! I could not have any 
sympathy with many of his views and hopes. He 
used to come here and talk about the 'solidarity of 
peoples;' and when he found that I was less and less 
interested in such things, he had yet another attrac- 
tion than myself which brought him to us. But he 
found that she also by no means entered into his 
opinions, and his visits became fewer. But we al- 
ways esteemed him. He was a very religious soul. 
When I first knew him he reverenced Dante chiefly, 
if not exclusively. When his letters were opened at 
the post-office here, Mazzini became, for the first 
time, known to the English people. There was great 
indignation at an English government taking the 
side of the Austrian against Italian patriots; and 
Mazzini was much sought for, invited to dinners, 
and all that. But he did not want the dinners. He 
went to but few places. He formed an intimacy 
with the Ashursts which did him great good — gave 
him a kind of home-circle for the rest of his life in 
England. At last it has come to an end. I went to 
see him just before he left London for the last time, 
passed an hour, and came away feeling that I should 
never see him again. And so it is. The papers and 
people have gone blubbering away over him — the 
very papers and people that denounced him during 
life, seeing nothing of the excellence that was in 



126 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

him. They now praise him without any perception 
of his defects. Poor Mazzini ! After all, he suc- 
ceeded. He died receiving the homage of the peo- 
ple, and seeing Italy united, with Eome for its capi- 
tal. "Well, one may be glad he has succeeded. We 
wait to see whether Italy will make anything great 
out of what she has got. We wait." 

Severe as Carlyle was upon mere idlers and lion- 
hunters, where there was any opportunity of assist- 
ing or usefully advising any one in difficulties or 
seriously desirous of doing good work, no woman's 
heart could be more tender. A young Scotchman, 
James Dodds, went off to England with three shil- 
lings in his pocket ; at Newcastle he became one of 
a strolling company of low - comedians ; after that, 
tried to gain a living as schoolmaster, and failed; 
next, failed as an editor ; and ultimately got a place 
as clerk with a solicitor near Melrose, and studied 
law. But Dodds had a good deal of talent, and was 
ambitious of literary fame. A cousin of his wrote 
for him to ask advice of Carlyle, who gave it : 

"It is doubtful to me," he wrote, "whether the highest conceiva- 
ble success in that course might not be for your cousin an evil in place 
of a blessing. I speak advisedly in this matter. There is no madder 
section of human business now weltering under the sun than that 
of periodical literature in England at this day. The meagrest bread- 
and-water wages at any honest, steady occupation, I should say, are 
preferable to a young man, especially for an ambitious, excitable 
young man. I mistake much if your cousin were not wise to stick 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 127 

Steadfastly by his law, and what benefit it will yield him, studying, of 
course, in all ways to perfect and cultivate himself, but leaving all lit- 
erary glory, etc., etc., to lie in the distance — an obscure possibility of 
the future, which he might attain, perhaps, but also would do very well 
without attaining. In another year, it seems, his official salary may be 
expected to increase to something tolerable ; he has his mother and 
loved ones within reach ; he has, or by diligence can borrow, some 
books worth reading ; his own free heart is within him to shape into 
humble wisdom or mar into violent madness ; God's great sky is over 
him, God's peaceable green earth around him ; I really know not that 
he ought to be in haste to quit such arrangements." 

James Dodds followed this advice, and became an 
eminent lawyer. But Carlyle followed up his first 
advice with friendly letters. In 1841 he writes : 

*' By- the- way, do you read German ? It would be worth your while 
to learn it, and not impossible — not even difficult — even where you 
are, if you be resolved. These young obscure years ought to be inces- 
santly employed in gaining knowledge of things worth knowing — es- 
pecially of heroic human souls worth knowing ; and you may believe 
me, the obscurer such years are, it is apt to be the better. Books are 
needed, but not yet many books ; a few well read. An open, true, 
patient, and valiant soul is needed ; that is the one thing needful." 

Later on, when Mr. Dodds wislied to settle in Lon- 
don, Carljle was prepared to aid him : 

"In this immeasurable treadmill of a place I have no time to an- 
swer letters," he says, but "if at any time a definite service can be 
done by answering, doubt not I shall make time for it." "Of law in 
London," he writes again, " I know nothing practical. I see some few 
lawyers in society at times, a tough, withered, wiry sort of men ; but 
they hide their law economies, even when I question them, very much 



128 THOMAS CAKLTLE. 

under lock and key. I understand that the labor is enormous in their 
profession, and the reward likewise; the successful lawyer amasses 
hundreds of thousands, and actually converts himself into a *' spiritual 
speldrin' — no blessed bargain." 

Mr. Dodds, who, besides becoming a successful 
barrister, wrote " The Fifty Years' Struggle of the 
Scottish Covenanters," and other works, was for 
many years a valued visitor at the memorable even- 
ings in Chelsea. 

Carlyle was absolutely trusted by literary people. 
For this reason, if he consented to be an arbiter, his 
arbitration, was never appealed from. IsTo one ever 
suspected, or could suspect, that any personal affec- 
tion or prejudice could ever make the balances 
waver in his hand. The letter in Part III. dated 
September 26, 1848, for the first time herein pub- 
lished, written to a gentleman whom I knew, will 
show the wisdom and care exhibited by Carlyle in 
differences of such character. 

XY. 

I have often recalled the words of Carlyle, in the 
room at Edinburgh, concerning Craigenpnttoch when 
he last visited it : it seemed to him a Valley of Je- 
hoshaphat. The Yalley full of graves, where Jews 
and Mussulmans desire to be buried because, as they 
suppose, that is to be the scene of the final judgment ! 
Edgar Quinet brings his Wanderer, Ahasuerus, to the 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 129 

Yalley of Jehosliaphat, seeking the repose wliicli has 
been forbidden him until the day of judgment. In 
answer to his final appeal for some herb that will 
cure the wound in his heart, the Yallej says to 
Ahasuerus, "My simples cure all pains but those of 
a heart in which the thorn remains." Carlyle, too, 
was a Wanderer, and wherever he went was a small 
tract of that sombre Yalley. He had wandered out 
of the fore-w^orld of thought and feeling, and come 
into an age to which he did not belong. The thorn 
in his heart, which the solitudes of Scotland could 
not remove, was his utter inability to bring his intel- 
lect into any harmony with the faith and ideas of the 
people in that region which always held his affec- 
tions. After he had come to London, where he was 
scandalized by the frivolous and tippling habits of so 
many even of the literary men, he saw the old folks 
and friends of Scotland in rosy tints. Again and 
again he went back there, but, as Mrs. Carljde told me, 
the majority of them were so narrow and dogmatic 
that Carlyle hardly drew a peaceful breath till he 
got back to Chelsea. But in London he was quite 
as much what M. Taine named him — a Mastodon. 
His kingdom was extinct; and as he measured bane 
and blessing by that past standard, his pessimism was 
inevitable. In the society of London Carlyle never 
had any pedantry about trifles of conventionality. 

He told me that his stomach had never ceased to 

6^ 



130 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

protest against the late dinner-hour, but he made his 
stomach submit. He even thought his American 
friends made too much complaint of the precedence 
accorded titled persons in society. It was, he said, 
traditional and not quite reasonable ; but it was con- 
tinued mainly because of the convenience of having 
already settled, without any one being responsible 
for it, a matter that might become complicated and 
troublesome. It was in far other matters than these 
that Carlyle failed to find his habitat. The spiritual 
pugnacity of the burgher in him was represented by 
an instinctive dislike of commonplace. He hated 
what he called Schwdrmerei — the heaping of assent 
upon assent — to an almost morbid extent. It is even 
possible that if his early antislavery and other radi- 
calism had not become so general, some of his para- 
doxical writings might never have appeared. Masses 
of men following either a Bright or a Beaconsfield 
were to him equally repulsive. One evening when 
I was taking tea with him, a third who was present 
expressed his joy that there was one man in England 
who sat down to his own cup of tea and his own 
pipe, as it were under his own vine and fig-tree, and 
expressed his independent views of men and events 
without even remembering whether they were the 
common opinion or not. Instantly the Scotch 
burgher rose again in Carlyle, and he expatiated on 
the " God-fearing men " he had known in his youth. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 131 

He was apt on such occasion to take up parables suf- 
ficiently commonplace, but dressed by bim in novel 
costumes. " Some one was telling me in Scotland of 
a shepherd of the moors driving some sheep into 
Dumfries. All at once the bell-wether took a fancy 
to go another road altogether, and the rest began to 
follow. The shepherd ran ahead and held his staff 
for a bar to them, a yard from the ground ; but one 
after the other they jumped over it. The poor fel- 
low was spattered from head to foot with mud, and 
got out of it as best he could. But the sheep went 
on and on the same wrong way; and every one 
jumped at the point where the shepherd's staff had 
once been. When one comes to think of it, there 
was in that whole proceeding the light of one sheep's 
head !" 

When she who had been the mediator between 
Carlyle and the world he was in, but not of, was gone, 
it seemed to me that his mental health first gave 
way. Mrs. Carlyle was more than his other self. In- 
stinctively all who came near them accepted Jier as 
the head in matters relating to the visible Kim. The 
tailor measuring him for a coat says, ^' Will yon have 
a velvet collar, ma'am?" Now suddenly this "light 
of his life as if gone out," he seemed to grope. His 
eye saw but one thing clearly — a grave. He seemed 
to be concentrating all of his powers of vision into 
that lens, as if to pierce it and catch some glimpse of 



132 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

that Beyond which hitherto had baffled him. Once 
he spoke to me of the " strange experiences" he had 
undergone within the few months following his 
wife's death. For a year, or nearly two, it was as if 
the world had become to him a realm of shadows. 
The fineness of both his memory and his judgment 
seemed blunted, and many of the persons he had 
known, and used to describe with interest and dis- 
crimination, were, if mentioned, brushed away like 
flies — mere annoyance to a heart trying to find si- 
lence and repose in the grave where it lay with his 
lost treasure. After a few years he rallied from this 
condition somewhat, but he was never quite the same 
man again, unless in exceptional hours. "Emerson 
complains of his memory," he once said, " but I fancy 
his memory is good enough ; probably it is with him 
as with me, much that he hears possesses no interest 
for him, and comes in one ear to go out of the other." 
He increasingly disliked to be in large companies, 
and if any argument was begun with him was apt to 
end it abruptly with a concessum sit. He was rest- 
less too. 

The last time that Carlyle appeared in any public 
assembly was on March 6, 1879, when he went with 
Allingham to hear >his friend, the charming story- 
teller W. E. S. Ealston, recite and interpret his fairy- 
lore in St. James's Hall. It was for the benefit of 
the innocent sufferers by the failure of the City of 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 133 

Glasgow Bank, with whom Carljle sympathized. 
During the recital of one of the fables, a figure in- 
troduced of a Yampire seemed to him to mean all- 
devouring Time — Temj>us edax rerum — and Mr. 
Ralston tells me that he heard Carljle whisper that 
to some one beside him. Carljle did not staj long, 
for alreadj the spirit of unrest was upon him. But 
this storj ("The Witch and the Sun's Sister," which 
is contained in Ralston's " Russian Folk-tales ") made 
an impression on him. In the tale, Prince Ivan leaves 
his home, being warned that his about-to-be-born sis- 
ter will be a vampire, and will devour all her famil j. 
He finds two aged sewing- women, and begs to live 
with them ; but they refuse, having no time to at- 
tend to him, since they must die as soon as they 
have used up a trunkf ul of needles. He journeys on 
and makes the same request of the giant Yertodub 
(Tree-extractor), who is also too busy, since he will 
have to die when he has uprooted the surrounding 
forests. The same happens with a further giant, 
Yertogon (Mountain-leveller), who is to die when he 
has levelled all the neighboring mountains. Ivan 
presses forward till he reaches the house of the sister 
of the Sun. He leaves her to see his old home again. 
She gives him a brush which produces forests, a 
comb which produces mountains; so on his way 
back Ivan gives the giants plenty of work to do, so 
extending their lives. He also has some talisman 



134 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

which makes the old sewing-women young again. 
Arrived liome, he is pursued by his vampire sister ; 
but the giants impede her with forests and moun- 
tains, and at last he is secure in the chamber of the 
Sun's sister. " I^one of them," said Carlyle, " could 
help Ivan ; they had to stick to their needles and 
forest-clearings; Ivan must go on his way with the 
like steadfastness and accomplish what is before him. 
"When he has reached the light, he can give them all 
more life and work, and make their old hearts young 
again at it ; and, doing that, he gets beyond reach of 
the Devourer." 

But Carlyle himself was never an Ivan. He was 
rather the giant laboring at forest and mountain to 
whom no Prince from the chamber of the Sun re- 
turned. He stood faithfully to what seemed to him 
his task ; from it he never swerved at the call of any 
passing wanderer, prince or peasant, till his hand was 
palsied and his eye grew dim. Then he sighed for 
Death, which was over-long in coming. 



Part II. 
BY THE GEAYE OF CAKLYLE 



BY THE GRAYE OF CARLTLE. 



EccLEFECHAN, February 10, 1881. 

On Saturday last a child came to me and said, 
"He is dead." I did not ask, Who? For nearly 
two weeks all eyes in Europe and America which 
know the value of a great man in this world had 
been centred on that home in Chelsea where Carlyle 
lay dying. He had long been sighing for death, for, 
he said, "Life is a burden when the strength has 
gone out of it." For a long time he had been un- 
able to receive his friends in the evening : those true 
!Noctes Ambrosianse were forever past. Brief inter- 
views with intimate friends in the early afternoon, 
followed by a drive with one or another of them, 
continued for about a year more. But these drives 
were not cheerful. The old man's voice was some- 
times scarcely audible. " The daughters of song are 
low." I found it painful to have to bend so close to 
catch the words, which when caught showed the in- 
tellect still abiding in its strength. It was long ere 
it must also be said, "Those that look out of the 



138 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

windows be darkened." But slowly that time came 
too. The old man sank into a state of painless pros- 
tration. The effort to attend to what was said to 
him was a disturbance, and all was silent around 
him. He was conscious nearly unto the last, and 
thoughtfully intimated to his nephew and niece, who 
had so long watched beside him, that he was in no 
pain. His last word was a gentle " Good-bye." At 
half -past eight, February 5, the end came without 
struggle. The golden lamp was not shattered; it 
went out. And how dark seemed London that day ! 
On Monday morning I started northward through 
a snow-storm, and in the evening was driving through 
the narrow streets of Annan. Along these same 
streets he and Irving used to walk in their school- 
days. 'Next morning I called on his sister, Mrs. 
Austin, who much resembles him. She spoke sweet- 
ly of her great brother in his early youth — how lov- 
ing he was as a son, how affectionate to them all, 
even in those days when his mind was harassed with 
doubts and misgivings about the path on which he 
should enter. Sleep might fail liim, and appetite, 
but love for those who needed his love never failed 
him. She is one of two sisters surviving. The one 
remaining brother, James, resides in a pleasant home 
in the neighborhood, and is about seventy-five years 
of age. The other surviving sister is Mrs. Aitken, 
of Dumfries. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 139 

The house in which Carlyle was born will proba- 
bly be preserved as a monument — perhaps with a 
library in it for the neighborhood. There could be 
none better. In this small house his parents, at his 
birth, were only able to occupy two rooms. That in 
which the great man was born is humble enough, lit 
by one little window — the bed built into the wall. 
The rooms are now occupied by the sexton who dug 
his grave. 

Between that small room where Carlyle first saw 
the light, and that smaller grave which hides him 
from the light, it is hardly a hundred steps : yet 
what a life - pilgrimage lies between those terms! 
what stretches of noble years, of immense labors, of 
invincible days rising from weary nights, mark the 
fourscore years and Rve that led from the stone- 
mason's threshold to a hero's tomb ! 

"What could his parents give him ? An ever-pres- 
ent sense of an invisible world, of which this life is 
the threshold — a world of transcendent joys marking 
the crown which the universe prepares for virtue, 
with an underside of unspeakable pains which mark 
the eternal brand fixed on evil-doing. Of this world 
they could teach him little, only that it was a place 
of brief probation by suffering and self-denial. For 
the rest they can only send him to a poor little school 
hard by. It, and Ecclefechan influences generally, 
are travestied in the experiences of Herr Teufels- 



140 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

drockh in his native " Entepf ulil." "Of the insig- 
nificant portion of my education which depended on 
schools," he says, " there need almost no notice be 
taken. I learned what others learn, and kept stored 
by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner 
of use in it." 

But, meanwhile, there is another university than 
that at Edinburgh, and little Thomas is already study- 
ing in it more deeply than pedagogue or parent sus- 
pects. That university is the universe itself, and 
little by little he finds that Ecclefechan is a centre 
of it. The little burn runs before the door; as he 
wades in it the brook whispers of its course as it 
passes on to the river, on to the sea, out into the 
universe. The swallows come from afar — from 
Africa and other regions — to nestle in the eaves of 
the house. The stage-coach, as it comes and departs, 
becomes mystical to the lad when he learns that it 
connects the village with distant cities, and is weav- 
ing human habitations together like a shuttle. The 
village road leads to the end of the world. 

On the day before the funeral I went out to 
Craigenputtoch, the name of the solitude in whose 
one house Carlyle and his wife began life together. 
The nearest railway-station is about ten miles dis- 
tant from the place, and, as I was warned, affords no 
means of conveyance, so I started in a carriage to 
drive over the fifteen miles of country road. It is 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 141 

a pilgrimage not without way -side shrines. Dum- 
fries, to begin with, is the town of Robert Burns, 
who died July 21, 1796, when Carljle was in his 
eighth month. Here, in the church -yard, is the 
beautiful monument of Burns: the Muse touches 
him on the shoulder as he holds the plough. On 
the outward road we pause at Iron Gray Church to 
see the tomb which Sir Walter Scott erected over 
Helen Walker, whom he had made the friend and 
exemplar of many children under the name of Jean- 
nie Deans, the girl who would not swerve from ver- 
bal truth to save her sister's life, but did journey to 
London on foot to save her. The epitaph bids the 
wayfarer " Respect the grave of poverty when com- 
bined with love of truth and dear affection." Not 
much farther on is the solitary monument of the old 
decipherer of mossy epitaphs, ^' Old Mortality." Now 
and then a stately old mansion is passed, and some 
cultured vales, but at length the road enters upon a 
wild, bleak country. The snow covers the desolate 
moors ; the road is stony ; but it is all picturesque 
as I remember how along every mile of it Emerson 
drove in a gig to clasp heart and hand of his young 
intellectual brother forty -eight years before. "I 
found the house amid desolate heathery hills, where 
the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart." And 
now, too, I found it, the home of a kindly shepherd 
and his family. Arthur Johnstone-Douglas, of Glen 



142 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

Stuart, is with me, and we are given by the humble 
people welcome and refreshment. We sit in the 
room where " Sartor Resartus " was written. Here 
gathered around the young thinker the faces of the 
great with whom he spiritually conversed, "never 
less alone than when alone." Here were written 
many of those essays which, as Emerson said when 
collecting them, had deprived their readers of sleep. 
The house itself is much the same in appearance 
as it was when Goethe had a sketch of it made for 
his translation of Carlyle's "Life of Schiller." A 
large kitchen was added at a later period, and several 
out-houses. There are about a thousand acres of the 
estate, though much of it is uncultivated. While 
Carlyle resided there he was only able to cultivate 
some two hundred acres, most of the produce of 
which went in the shape of rental to the widow 
Welsh, Mrs. Carlyle's mother. Only at her death 
did it come into the possession of Carlyle's wife. 
Up to the present time it had belonged to the 
author, and has been under the care of his brother 
James, and his son of the same name. It would 
now revert to the Welsh family, were any represent- 
ative of it living ; as it is, Craigenputtoch will be- 
come the possession of Edinburgh University. The 
house is neat and comfortable. The room which was 
used for a library is commodious, though the out- 
looks are sombre enough. However, there are fine 




MRS. THOMAS CARLYLE. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 143 

old asli-trees around, and near-by there was in those 
days a noble grove to make up for the treeless bar- 
renness of the surrounding landscape. 

But no place could be joyless where Jane Welsh 
Carlyle was. I have just seen a portrait of her, 
taken when she was young. ISTo one who saw her 
only in the days of her invalidism can imagine how 
bright and beautiful she then was. The face is full 
of mirth and graciousness, refined and spirituelle. 
One can imagine that graceful form moving daintily 
amid the wood and heather, and the merry laugh 
that made the solitude gay. 

The solitude was not unvisited by a certain class 
of guests. " Poor Irish folk come wandering over 
these moors," he said to Emerson. "My dame 
makes it a rule to give every son of Adam bread to 
eat, and supplies his wants to the next house. But 
here are thousands of acres which might give them 
all meat, and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to 
the moor and till it. They burned the stacks, and 
so found a way to force rich people to attend to 
them." When Carlyle died, the Irish were again 
burning stacks, and the rich attending to them. 

For the rest, there was " not a person to speak to 
within sixteen miles, except the minister of Duns- 
core." Yet Carlyle's heart was still clinging to his 
kindred in the far-away people among whom he was 
born. In 1832 he heard that the cholera was devas- 



144 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

tating Dumfries. He wrote the following letter to 
his mother's brother, addressed to " Mr. John Aitken, 
mason, Friars' Yennel, Dumfries :" 

*'Cratgenputtoch, October 16, 1832. 

"My dear Uncle, — Judge if I am anxious to hear from you. 
Except the silence of the newspapers, I have no evidence that you are 
still spared. The disease, I see, has been in your street ; in Shaw's ; 
in Jamie Aitken's ; it has killed your friend Thomson : who knows 
what further was its appointed work ? You I strive to figure in the 
meanwhile as looking at it, in the universal terror, with some calm- 
ness, as knowing and practically believing that your days and the 
days of those dear to you were now, as before and always, in the 
hand of God only, from whom it is vain to fly, towards whom lies the 
only refuge of man. Death's thousand doors have ever stood open ; 
this, indeed, is a wide one, yet it leads no farther than they all lead. 

"Our boy was in the town a fortnight ago (for I believe, by expe- 
rience, the infectious influence to be trifling, and quite inscrutable to 
man, therefore go and send whithersoever I have business, in spite of 
cholera) ; but I had forgot that he would not naturally see Shaw or 
some of you, and gave him no letter, so got no tidings. He will call 
on you to-morrow, and in any case bring a verbal message. If you 
are too hurried to write in time for him, send a letter next day ' to the 
care of Mrs. Welsh, Templand, Thornhill ;' tell me only that you are 
all spared alive. 

*'We are for Annandale after Thornhill, and may possibly enough 
return by Dumfries. I do not participate in the panic. We were 
close beside cholera for many weeks in London. ' Every ball has its 
billet.' 

"I hear the disease is fast abating. It is likely enough to come 
and go among us, to take up its dwelling with us among our other 
maladies. The sooner we grow to compose ourselves beside it, the 
wiser for us. Man who has reconciled himself to die need not go dis- 
tracted at the manner of his death. 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 145 

" God make us all ready, and be his time ours ! No more to- 
night. 

*' Ever your affectionate T. Cakltle." 

Hither Emerson's divining-rod brought him in 
1833. " Straight uprose that lone wayfaring man," 
to commune with one lonelier than himself, while as 
yet but few had heard the names of either. On leav- 
ing Craigeuputtoch, we passed a craggy brow, high 
on the left, overlooking Dunscore, which was easily 
identified as the point where Carlyle and Emerson 
sat together. " There we sat down," wrote Emerson, 
" and talked of the immortality of the soul." There 
Carlyle said, " Christ died on the tree : that built 
Dunscore kirk yonder; that brought you and me 
together. Time has only a relative existence." 

The last words Carlyle ever said to me were, 
" Give my love to Emerson. I still think of his visit 
to us in Craigeuputtoch as the most beautiful thing 
in my experience there." 

That high point, where the two young thinkers sat 
and conversed, appeared to me as a latter-day Pisgah : 
only one of them was to enter the Land of Promise 
they beheld from afar. One returned to his Valley 
of Jehoshaphat to dwell with the shades of heroes 
whose world is forever past ; the other passed on to 
greet the heralds of a world unborn. Despair and 
Hope have found their fullest utterances in the Old- 
World scholar and the New-World prophet who met 



146 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

and parted on that lonelj height of Scotland forty- 
eight years ago. 

Dunscore village is seven miles from Craigenput- 
toch. The shepherd told us that the minister there 
was very aged, and had been there a long time ; 
probably would have known Carlyle. So we drove 
over to Dunscore, and visited the Manse, as the par- 
sonage is termed in Scotland. The aged minister 
said he had come there after Mr. Carlyle had gone to 
London ; he had never seen him. "But he was one 
of my heritors'''^ (i. e., pecuniary helpers), " and my ac- 
quaintance with him was limited to correspondence 
concerning the educational needs of this district, in 
which I am bound to say he liberally assisted." 

The funeral of Carlyle, it may be assumed in ac- 
cordance with his expressed wishes, was singularly 
private. IS^either the day nor the place of it was 
known to the public. It was generally supposed 
that he would be buried beside his wife amid the 
mouldering walls of Haddington Cathedral. How 
strong were the ties that bound his heart to that spot 
is shown in the tribute on her grave. But with so 
much else which Carlyle had derived from his early 
Hebrew training, he had a desire, like that of the 
patriarchs, to be " gathered to his people." But for 
his love of his people, lowly as they were, probably 
the grave of Carlyle would have been in America. 
"I have," he said to Edward Irving, when they 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 147 

were young men together — " I have the ends of my 
thoughts to bring together, which no one can do in 
this thoughtless scene. I have my views of life to 
reform, and the whole plan of my conduct to re- 
model; and withal I have my health to recover. 
And then once more I shall venture my bark upon 
the waters of this wide realm, and, if she cannot 
weather it, I shall steer west and try the waters of 
another world." This alternative must have recur- 
red to him when America alone was listening to his 
voice ; when his spiritual biography, in " Sartor Re- 
sartus," unpublished in England, was already speak- 
ing to American youth, as Emerson said, with an em- 
phasis that deprived them of sleep. But Carlyle 
loved his widowed mother and his people, and could 
not leave them. And his last wish was to rest among 
them. As Israel died in an Egyptian palace, and 
would have been laid by Pharaoh in the proudest 
pyramid, but charged his sons, "Ye shall bury me 
with my people," so could not Carlyle rest in "West- 
minster Abbey, which was offered, nor in Hadding- 
ton Cathedral, where his wife's wealthier kindred 
lay. Ecclefechan, long raised from obscurity by be- 
ing his birthplace, is now consecrated by holding his 
dust. 

Had Carlyle's aversion to all pomp and ostenta- 
tion not caused such strict privacy to be observed, 
the funeral would have been one of vast dimensions. 



14:8 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

The Scotch gentry would have stood beside the 
grave of one of whom they were proud; but as it 
was, a red -coated fox-hunt was going on in the 
neighborhood. A new minister, too, was installed 
that day in the neighboring kirk of Cummertrees. 
As I drove to the funeral I met the more well-to-do 
folk of Ecclefechan driving thither. Those left in 
the village seemed to be mainly peasants and their 
children. These were made aware of the hour when 
the burial was to take place by the tolling of the 
bell in the School Board building. Hundreds of 
children gathered near the gate of the church-yard 
or climbed on the walls. About a hundred young 
workmen made their way inside, and stood await- 
ing the Arrival of the body after the night journey 
from London. Soon after noon the hearse drove 
up; with it ^ve coaches, containing the relatives. 
The coffin was of plain oak. On it was engraved, 
"Thomas Carlyle: born December 4, 1795; died 
February 5, 1881." White flowers were upon it, 
among them a large wreath. Along with the male 
relations stood a very few personal friends of Car- 
lyle, foremost among them Anthony Froude, Pro- 
fessor Tyndall, and Mr. Lecky. With exception of 
these, and a few journalists, they who gathered 
around Carlyle's grave were of the peasantry. 

What did these lowly ones think as they saw their 
great villager laid to restf It was amid profound 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 149 

stillness: there was no ceremony; no word broke 
that silence amid which the prophet of Silence was 
laid to rest. But those young workmen may have 
heard still, small voices. One of these might have 
come from the family tomb, which bears this in- 
scription : 

" Erected to the memory of Jannet Carlyle, spouse 
to James Carlyle, mason in Ecclefechan, who died 
the 11th September, 1792, in the twenty-fifth year 
of her age. Also Jannet Carlyle, daughter to James 
Carlyle and Margaret Aitken: she died at Eccle- 
fechan, January 27, 1801, aged seventeen months. 
Also Margaret their daughter: she died June 22, 
1830, aged twenty- seven. And the above James 
Carlyle, born at Brownknowe in August, 1758, died 
at Scotsbrig on the 23d January, 1832, and now also 
rests here. And here also now rests the above Mar- 
garet Aitken, his second wife : born at Whitestanes, 
Kirkmahoe, in September, 1771 ; died at Scotsbrig 
on Christmas - day, 1853. She brought him nine 
children, whereof four sons and three daughters sur- 
vived, gratefully reverent of such a father and such 
a mother." 

The last sentence was added by Thomas Carlyle. 
It is almost the only touch of feeling discoverable in 
the crowded church -yard. Some of the old slabs 
are carved with skull and cross-bones, but their in- 
scriptions are merely names and dates. Some of the 



150 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

old folk of this region are still in the cross -bone 
stratum of belief. " What a pity yon man Tom 
Caerl was an infidel 1" one was heard saying to an- 
other along the road. The two shook their heads 
over their greatest countryman. What notions they 
had of fidelity who regarded that life as product of 
infidelity were an antiquarian speculation. The 
younger peasantry of Ecclefechan, reading that trib- 
ute on the tomb, seeing the great man laid beside his 
lowly parents, bringing there whatever lustre sur- 
rounded his name, will probably reflect that a man 
may depart from the creed and the ways of his peo- 
ple, might become famous enough to refuse decora- 
tions proffered by royalty, yet preserve the simplicity 
and the affections of his early life. They may have 
been impressed, in that silence, by the fact that here 
was one of themselves — nay, as the tolling School 
Board bell might remind them, with less advantages 
than theirs — who climbed upward, and gained the 
love and honor of the world. 

It is said that the name of this village means the 
Ecclesia of St. Fechan, and that the ancient church 
stood near the spot where Hoddam kirk now stands. 
Beside this church stood the school to which Carlyle 
was sent as a child. There taught the poor " down- 
bent, broken-hearted, under-foot martyr," the teacher 
who " did little for me except discover that he could 
do little." At any rate, the poor man pronounced 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 151 

Thomas a genius, fit for a learned profession. In 
looking after tbe site of the old school-house, I found 
at Hoddara an old man who had been a pupil there 
with Thomas. He was aged and shivering as he 
moved slowly amid the snow. He said, " Tom al- 
ways sent me something every year — until this last 
winter ; then it stopped." 

Then it stopped! And how much has stopped 
besides this poor brother's little winter solace! 
What charities to hearts and minds in their sore 
need, what brave words of cheer for those moving 
about in worlds not realized! Graduation from 
*^ Carlyle Close," now a shamble, to the highest in- 
tellectual distinction of the nineteenth century im- 
plies the realization of several worlds dim to others. 
Out of a depth like this his voice will always go 
forth, and to it the deeps wall always answer. The 
influence of Carlyle will never " stop :" wherever 
shams are falling, his sturdy blows will still be 
heard; generations of the free will recognize that 
they are offspring of the fire in his heart, burning 
all fetters; and when the morning stars sing to- 
gether of dawning days, when heroes of humanity 
replace nobles without nobility and bauble-crowned 
kings, his voice, so long a burden of pain, will be 
heard again rising into song. 




THOMAS CARLYLE. 



Part III. 
LETTEES OF CARLYLE 

(WITH ONE FROM EMERSON) 



r^ 



EXPLANATORY NOTE. 



The following extracts, from early letters of 
Thomas Carljle, require a few words of explana- 
tion : 

In the year 1838 a friend kindly lent me for pe- 
rusal a bundle of letters, numbering between forty 
and fifty, written by Thomas Carlyle, addressed to 
two intimate and evidently much-beloved college 
friends. The earliest date of these letters was 1814, 
when the writer of them was nineteen years of age, 
and the latest 1824, the year in which he first visited 
London. These two friends were Thomas Mitchell, 
afterwards one of the classical masters in the Edin- 
burgh Academy, who died before 1838, and Thomas 
Murray, afterwards Dr. Thomas Murray, author of 
" The Literary History of Galloway," a lecturer, in 
later years, on political economy, and subsequently 
partner in a printing firm in Edinburgh. He also 
is dead. 

At the time when these letters were lent to me I 
had Just been reading witli absorbing interest and 



156 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

admiration that marvellous book — tlie book of the 
century — " The French Revolution ; a History," by 
Thomas Carlyle, which produced a deeper and more 
vivid impression on my mind than any work I had 
ever met with before. His early articles in the 
Edinburgh and other reviews were familiar to me, 
and in 1837 I had received from Mr. Emerson a 
copy of the first edition, published at Boston, United 
States, of "Sartor Resartus," reprinted from Fra- 
ser^s Magazine (prior to any reprint in this country). 
To me, therefore, the privilege of reading this batch 
of letters was a treat of no common kind. With 
eager delight I commenced their perusal at a late 
hour, and never ceased until I had finished them in 
the early hours of morning. In these letters Car- 
lyle poured out to his two college-mates his inmost 
thoughts and feelings with unstinted frankness. He 
confided to them his aspirations, his failures, his 
glooms and despondencies, his struggles, hopes, and 
disappointments, while bravely battling with hard 
fortune and uncongenial work, and as yet unable to 
find his true vocation. There are passages in these 
letters which I venture to say are not surpassed by 
anything he has since written ; and many of them 
afford a deeply interesting insight into his mind and 
character. So m.^ch was I struck with this that I 
ventured to make copious extracts, sitting up through 
the best part of a couple of nights for this purpose. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 157 

"When I restored the precious packet to the kind 
friend who had lent it, I was asked whether I had 
made any transcripts. While confessing my trans- 
gression, if transgression it could be called, I was 
allowed to retain what I had copied on the distinct 
understanding that during Carlyle's lifetime not a 
line should be allowed to get into print. This 
pledge I have strictly kept. A few years ago the 
matter was mentioned to the venerable writer of 
the letters by a common friend. His deliverance 
on the matter was — a hearty laugh, accompanied 
with an expression of surprise, not unmingled with 
satisfaction, that there was any one, at that early 
time, who felt so much interest in him and his do- 
ings as to have taken the trouble to preserve these 
records of his youthful thoughts and feelings and 
struggles. 

In conclusion, let me say that I thought it due to 
Mr. Froude to submit these extracts to him., and to 
place them at his disposal for use in the forthcoming 
"Life and Letters" from his pen, in case the origi- 
nal letters themselves should not come into his pos- 
session — at the same time asking to be allowed to 
make them public, in the event of his not being able 
to use the whole of them, from the abundance of 
material likely to be in his hands. I need not say 
that I should regret the withholding of a single sen- 
tence of these extracts, they are so characteristic 



158 THOAIAS CAKLYLE. 

throughout. Mr. Froude has been so kind as to say 
that there can be no objection to their publication, 
as it is most desirable that the fullest light should 
be thrown on every period of Carlyle's life. 

Alexander Ikelaitd. 
Inglewood, Eovvdon, Cheshire, April lith, 1881. 



LETTERS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. 



TO THOMAS MITCHELL AND THOMAS MUEKAY. 

1. 

'^ August, 18U. 

" But — O Tom ! what a foolish, flattering creature 
thou art ! To talk of future eminence in connection 
with the literary history of the nineteenth century 
to such a one as me ! Alas ! my good lad, when I 
and all my fancies and reveries and speculations 
shall have been swept over with the besom of obliv- 
ion, the literary history of no century will feel itself 
the worse. Yet think not, because I talk thus, I am 
careless about literary fame. No, Heaven knows 
that ever since I have been able to form a wish, the 
wish of being known has been the foremost. O 
Fortune ! thou that givest unto each his portion in 
this dirty planet, bestow (if it shall please thee), coro- 
nets and crowns, and principalities and purses, and 
pudding and power upon the great and noble and fat 
ones of the earth ; grant me that, with a heart of in- 
dependence, unyielding to thy favors and unbending 
to thy frowns, I may attain to literary fame — and, 



160 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

though starvation be my lot, I will smile that I have 
not been born a king ! ! ! But, alas ! my dear Mur- 
ray, what am I, or what are you, or what is any other 
poor unfriended stripling in the ranks of learning ? 

" 'Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb,' etc., etc. 
****** 

" The more I know her and her species, the more 
heartily I despise them. It is strange, but it is true, 
that by a continued and unvarying exercise of affec- 
tation, those creatures in the end entirely lose any 
kind of real feeling which they might originally 
have possessed. Ignorant, formal, conceited, their 
whole life is that of an automaton, without sense, 
and almost without soul ! Once, for instance, I rec- 
ollect that to fill up one of those awful hiatus in 
conversation that occur at times in spite of all one's 

efforts to the contrary, and to entertain Miss M , 

I took up a ' Tristram Shandy,' and read her one of 
the very best jokes within the boards of the book. 

Ah-h-h-h ! sighed Miss M , and put on a look 

of right tender melancholy ! Now, did the smallest 
glimmering of reason appear here? But I have 
already wasted too much time on her and those like 
her. Heaven be their comforter ! 

"I regret that Jeffrey should bestow so much of 
his time upon politics, and I rejoice in the prospect 
(for this is one of the advantages of Peace) that in 
a short time he will not have this in his power. He 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 161 

must be an extraordinary man. 'No subject, however 
hackneyed, but he has the wit of extracting some 
new thought out of it. The introduction to the 
criticism on Byron is, in my opinion, admirable — so 
acute, so philosophical; none but a man of keen 
penetration and deep research could have written 
such a thing. Even the * Present State of Europe ' 
becomes interesting in his hands." 

2. 

''April, 1815, 

" But the book I am most pleased with is * Cicero 
de Finibus ' — not that there is much new discussion 
in it, but his manner is so easy and elegant ; and, 
besides, there is such a charm connected with attend- 
ing to the feelings and principles of a man over 
whom ' the tide of years has rolled.' We are enter- 
tained even with a common sentiment ; and when we 
meet with a truth which we ourselves had previously 
discovered, we are delighted with the idea that our 
minds are similar to that of the venerable Eoman," 



o. 

"Annan, June 21, 1815. 

" The most disagreeable circumstance in a tutor's 
life is his want of society. There is no person in 
the family of equal rank with him except the gov- 
erness ; and as the aims and ends of her and him are 



162 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

often various, and their dispositions heterogeneous, 
the tutor is, for the most part, left to commune with 
himself. Such a situation, in this view, is not de- 
sirable ; but the power of habit is unlimited, and, at 
any rate, this state has its advantages : the increase 
of opportunities it affords for study are obvious; 
and though we cannot enjoy the spirit-stirring crack 
of our jocund cronies, yet if we can spend the same 
time with Shakespeare or Addison, or Stewart, we 
are gainers by the privation. I grant we cannot 
always live with your sages and your demigods ; but 
no conversation at all is preferable to the gossiping 
and tittle-tattle that many a poor wight is forced to 
brook, — e. g., your humble servant, — living ^ Pelican 
in the Wilderness' to avoid the cant and slang of 
the coxcombs, the bloods, the bucks, the boobies, 
with which all earth is filled." 

4. 

"Annan, August 22, 1815. 

" ^ * * His (Lord Kaimes's) works are generally all 
an awkward compound of ingenuity and absurdity, 
and in this volume ["Essays on the Principles of 
Morality "] the latter quality, it appears to me, con- 
siderably preponderates. It is metaphysical — upon 
Belief, Identity, Necessity, etc. I devoutly wish that 
no friend of mine may ever come to study it, unless 
he wish to learn 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 163 

" *To weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull 
That's empty, when the moon is full ;* 

and in that case he cannot study under a more prop- 
er master. * * * [I am] becoming daily more luke- 
warm about the preaching business." 

5. 

"Annan, December 5, 1815. 

" * * ^ I had a sight of ' Waverley ' soon after I 
received your letter, and I cannot help saying that, 
in my opinion, it is by far the best novel that has 
been written these thirty years — at least, that I know 
of. Eben. Cruickshanks, mine host of The Seven 
Golden Candlesticks, and Mr. Gifted Gilfillan, are 
described in the spirit of Smollett or Cervantes. Who 
does not shed a tear for the ardent Yich Ian Yohr, 
and the unshaken Evan Dhu, when, perishing amid 
the shouts of an English mob, they refuse to swerve 
from their principles ? And who will refuse to pity 
the marble Galium Beg, when, hushed in the strife of 
death, he finishes his earthly career on Clifton Moor, 
far from the blue mountains of the North, without 
one friend to close his eyes? 'Tis an admirable 
performance. Is Scott still the reputed author?" 

[In this letter Carlyle mentions reading Euler's 
" Algebra," Addison's " Freeholder," Cuvier's " The- 
ory of the Earth," Moli^re's " Comedies," the month- 
ly reviews, critical journals, etc.] 



164 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 



6. 

'' February 20, 1818. 

"After an arduous struggle with sundry historians 
of great and small renown, I sit down to answer the 
much-valued epistle of my friend. Doubtless you 
are disposed to grumble that I have been so long in 
doing so ; but I have an argument in store for you. 
To state the proposition logically : This letter, I con- 
ceive, must either amuse you or not. If it amuse 
you, then certainly you cannot be so unreasonable as 
to cavil at a little harmless delay ; and if it do not, 
you will rejoice that your punishment has not been 
sooner inflicted. Having thus briefly fixed you be- 
tween the horns of my dilemma, from which, I flatter 
myself, no skill will suffice to extricate you, I pro- 
ceed with a peaceful and fearless mind. 

"* * "^ I continue to teach (that I may subsist 
thereby), with about as much satisfaction as I should 
beat hemp, if such were my vocation. Excepting 
one or two individuals, I have little society that I 
value very highly ; but books are a ready and effect- 
ual resource. May blessings be upon the head of 
Cadmus, or the Phoenician, or whoever it was that 
invented books ! I may not detain you with the 
praises of an art that carries the voice of man to the 
extremities of the earth, and to the latest genera- 
tions ; but it is lawful for the solitary wight to ex- 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 165 

press the love he feels for those companions so stead- 
fast and nnpresuming, that go or come without re- 
luctance, and that, when his fellow-animals are proud 
or stupid or peevish, are ever ready to cheer the lan- 
guor of his soul, and gild the barrenness of life with 
the treasures of bygone times. Now and then I 
cross the Firth ; but these expeditions are not attend- 
ed with much enjoyment. The time has been when 
I would have stood a-tiptoe at the name of Edin- 
burgh ; but all that is altered now. The men with 
whom I meet are mostly preachers and students in 
divinity. These persons desire not to understand 
Newton's Philosophy, but to obtain a well-plenished 
manse. Their ideas, which are uttered with much 
vain jangling, and generally couched in a recurring 
series of quips and most slender puns, are nearly con- 
fined to the Church, or rather Kirk-session politics 
of the place ; the secret habits, freaks, or adventures 
of the clergy or professors ; the vacant parishes and 
their presentees, with patrons, tutors, and all other 
appurtenances of the tithe-pigtail. Such talk is very 
edifying certainly; but I take little delight in it. 
My theological propensities may be included within 
small compass ; and with regard to witlings, gibers, 
or such small gear, the less one knows of them it is 
not the worse. 

"My perusal of Smollet's 'Continuation' was a 
much harder and more unprofitable task. Next I 



166 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

read Gibbon's * Decline and Fall,' a work of im- 
mense research and splendid execution. Embracing 
almost all the civilized world, and extending from 
the time of Trajan to the taking of Constantinople 
by Mahomet II., in 1453, it connects the events of 
ancient with those of modern history. Alternately 
delighted and offended by the gorgeous coloring 
with which his fancy invests the rude and scanty 
materials of his narrative, sometimes fatigued by the 
learning of his notes, occasionally amused by their 
liveliness, frequently disgusted by their obscenity, 
and admiring or deploring the bitterness of liis skil- 
ful irony, I toiled through his many tomes with exem- 
plary patience. His style is exuberant, sonorous, and 
epigrammatic to a degree that is often displeasing. 
He yields to Hume in elegance and distinctness, to 
Robertson in talent for general disquisition ; but he 
excels them both in a species of brief shrewd remark 
for which he seems to have taken Tacitus as a model, 
more than any other that I know of. The whole 
historical triumvirate is abundantly destitute of vir- 
tuous feeling, or indeed of any feeling at all. I won- 
der what benefit is derived from reading all this stuff. 
What business of mine is it though Timur Bey erect- 
ed a pyramid of 80,000 human skulls in the val- 
ley of Bagdad, and made an iron cage for Bajazet? 
or what have I to do with the cold-blooded savage 
policy of [illegible] and the desolating progress either 



THOMAS CAELTLE. 167 

of Gengis or Napoleon ? It is in vain to tell us that 
our knowledge of human nature is increased bj the 
operation. Useful knowledge of that sort is acquired 
not bj reading, but by experience ; and with regard 
to political advantages, the less one knows of them 
the greater will be his delight in the principles of 
Lord Castlereagh and Sidmouth with their [illegible] 
suspension, holy league, and salvation of Europe. 
Yet, if not profit, there is some pleasure. In his- 
tory, at all events, I believe we must not apply the 
Gui lono too rigorously. It may be enough to sanc- 
tion any pursuit that it gratifies an innocent, and 
still more an honorable, propensity of the human 
mind. When I look back upon this paragraph, I can- 
not but admit that reviewing is a very beneficial art. 
If a dull man take it into his head to write either 
for the press or the post-oflBce without materials or a 
dead lift, it never fails to extricate him." 

7. 

''May 20, 1818. 

" I believe it to be a truth (and though no creature 
believed it, it would continue to be a truth) that a 
man's dignity, in the great system of which he forms 
a part, is exactly proportioned to his moral and in- 
tellectual acquirements ; and I find, moreover, that 
when I am assaulted by those feelings of discontent 
and ferocity which solitude at all times tends to pro- 



168 THOMAS CAULTLE. 

duce, and by that host of miserable little passions 
which are ever and anon attempting to disturb one's 
repose, there is no method of defeating them so ef- 
fectual as to take them in flank bj a zealous course 
of study. I believe all this, but my practice clashes 
with my creed. 

" * * * Sometimes, indeed, on a fine evening, and 
when I have quenched my thirst with large potations 
of Souchong, I say to myself, Away with despond- 
ency ! Hast thou not a soul, and a kind of under- 
standing in it ? And what more has any analyst of 
them all ? But next morning, alas ! when I consider 
my understanding, how coarse yet feeble it is, and 
how much of it must be devoted to supply the vul- 
gar wants of life, or to master the paltry but never- 
ending vexations with which all creatures are be- 
leaguered, I ask how it is possible not to despond." 

8. 

''July, 1818. 

" Be assured, I have not forgotten the many joy- 
ful days which long ago we spent together. Sweet 
days of ignorance and airy hope ! They had their 
troubles too; but to bear them there was a light- 
heartedness and buoyancy of soul which the sterner 
qualities of manhood, and the hardier buffetings that 
require them, have forever forbidden to return. I 
forbear to say much of the pursuits which have en- 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 169 

gaged me. They would little interest you, I fear. 
With most young men, I have had dreams of intel- 
lectual greatness, and of making me a name upon 
the earth. They were little else but dreams. To 
gain renown is what I do not hope, and hardly care 
for in the present state of my feelings. The im- 
provement of one's mind, indeed, is the noblest ob- 
ject which can occupy any reasonable creature, but 
the attainment of it requires a concurrence of cir- 
cumstances over which one has little control. I now 
perceive more clearly than ever that any man's opin- 
ions depend not on himself so much as on the age 
he lives in, or even the persons with whom he asso- 
ciates. If his mind at all surpass their habits, his 
aspirings are briefly quenched in the narcotic atmos- 
phere that surrounds him. He forfeits sympathy, 
and provokes hatred, if he excel but a little the dull 
standard of his neighbors. Difficulties multiply as 
he proceeds, and none but chosen souls can rise to 
any height above the level of the swinish herd. 
Upon this principle, I could tell you why Socrates 
sacrificed at his death to ^sculapius; why Kepler 
wrote his ' Cosmographic Harmony;' and why Sir 
Thomas More believed the Pope to be infallible. 
Nevertheless, one should do what he can. I need 
not trouble you with the particulars of my situation. 
My prospects are not extremely brilliant at present. 
I have quitted all thoughts of the Church, for many 



170 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

reasons, which it would be tedious, perhaps [illegi- 
ble], to enumerate. I feel no love (I should wish to 
see the human creature that feels any love) for the 
paltry trade I follow ; and there is before me a check- 
ered and fluctuating scene, when I see nothing clear- 
ly, but that a little time will finish it. Yet where- 
fore should we murmur ? A share of evil, greater or 
less (the difference of shares is not worth mention- 
ing), is the unalterable doom of mortals, and the 
mind may be taught to abide in peace. Complaint 
is generally despicable, always worse than unavail- 
ing. It is an instructive thing, I think, to observe 
Lord Byron, surrounded with the voluptuousness of 
an Italian seraglio, chanting a mournful strain over 
the wretchedness of human life — and then to con- 
template the poor but lofty-minded Epictetus, the 
slave of a cruel master too ; and to hear him lifting 
up his voice to far-distant generations in the unfor- 
gotten w^ords of his 'Encheiridion.' But a truce to 
moralizing ; suffice it, with our Stoic, to suffer and 
abstain." 

9. 

''November, 1818. 

" From the conversation which we had in the Inn 
of Basenthwaite, etc., I judge you are as unfit as 
myself for the study of theology, as they arrogantly 
name it. "Whatever becomes of us, never let us 
cease to behave like honest men. * * * 



THOMAS CAELYLE.' 171 

"I have thought much and long of the irksome 
drudgery, the solitude, the gloom of my condition. 
I reasoned thus : These things may be endured, if 
not with a peaceful heart, at least with a serene 
countenance; but it is worth while to inquire 
whether the profit will repay the pain of enduring 
them — a scanty and precarious livelihood constitutes 
the profit ; you know me and can form some judg- 
ment of the pain. But there is loss as well as pain. 
I speak not of the loss of health ; but the destruc- 
tion of benevolent feeling, that searing of the heart 
which misery, especially of a petty kind, sooner or 
later will never fail to effect — is a more frightful 
thing. The desire which, in common with all men, 
I feel for conversation and social intercourse is, I 
find, enveloped in a dense, repulsive atmosphere, not 
of vulgar mauvaise-honte, though such it is generally 
esteemed, but of deeper feelings, which I partly in- 
herit from nature, and which are mostly due to the 
undefined station I have hitherto occupied in society. 
If I continue a schoolmaster, I fear there is little 
reason to doubt that these feelings will increase, and 
at last drive me entirely from the kindly sympathies 
of life, to brood in silence over the bitterness into 
which my friendly propensities must be changed. 
Where then would be my comfort? * * -^^ I have 
thought of writing for booksellers. Risum teneas ; 
for at times I am serious in this matter. In fine 



172 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

weather, it does strike me that there are in this head 
some ideas, a few disjecta raemhra^ which might find 
admittance into some one of the many publications 
of the day. To live by authorship was never my in- 
tention. It is said not to be common at present, and 
happily so; for if we may credit biographies, the 
least miserable day of an author's life is generally 
the last. 

" ' sad cure, for who would lose, 

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
Those thoughts that wander through eternity, 
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 
In the wide womb of uncreated night, 
Devoid of sense and motion ?' 

* * * You see, my boy, that my prospects are not 
the brightest in nature. Yet what shall we say? 
Contentment, that little - practised virtue, has been 
inculcated by saint, by savage, and by sage — and by 
each person from a different principle. Do not fear 
that I shall read you a homily on that hackneyed 
theme. Simply I wish to tell you that in days of 
darkness — for there are days when my support (pride, 
or whatever it is) has enough to do — I find it useful 
to remember that Cleanthes whose [illegible] may 
last yet other two thousand years, never murmured 
when he labored by night, as a street-porter, that he 
might hear the lectures of Zeno by day ; and that 
Epictetus, the ill-used slave of a cruel tyrant's as 
wretched minion, wrote that ' Encheiridion ' which 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 173 

may fortify the souls of the latest inhabitant of the 
earth. Besides, though neither of these men had 
adorned their species, it is morally certain that our 
earthly joys or griefs can last but for a few brief 
years; and though the latter were eternal, complaint 
and despondency could neither mitigate their inten- 
sity nor shorten their duration. Therefore, my duty 
and that of every young man on that point is clear 
as light itself." 

10. 

^'January 7, 1819. 

" * * * I wish from my soul some less laborious 
mode of friendly intercourse could be devised than 
letter-writing. Much may be done in the flight of 
ages ; I despair of steam indeed, notwithstanding its 
felicitous application to many useful purposes, but 
who can limit the undiscovered agent with which 
knowledge is yet to enrich philanthropy ? Charm- 
ing prospect for the dull, above all, the solitary dull, 
of future times ; small comfort for us, however, who, 
in no great fraction of one age, shall need to care 
nothing about the matter." 

11. 

"Edinburgh, February, 1819. 

"* * * I shall be much gratified to get intelli- 
gence of your fortunes. I might send you some 
details about my own, but they have nowise altered 



174 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

since I wrote last, and have therefore a most indefi- 
nite and wavering aspect. Your road through life 
seems to be separating from mine — perhaps never 
more to meet. During the Rve years that have 
elapsed since we lived together, each must have ac- 
quired principles and predilections in which the 
other cannot be expected t to participate. Yet I 
trust, for the sake of both, that neither of us will 
cease to remember with a meek and kindly feeling 
that pleasant period which we spent together. Betide 
us what will, whenever we meet again may each see 
in the friend of his youth a man unsullied by an}'- 
thing that is paltry or degrading. 

"Although well aware of the propensity which 
exists in men to speak more about themselves than 
others care for hearing, yet as you have hitherto 
been the participator of all my schemes, I venture 
to solicit your forbearance and advice at a time when 
I need them as much, perhaps, as I have ever done. 

a -x- * * The source of that considerable quantity 
of comfort which 1 enjoy in these circumstances is 
twofold. First, there is the hope of better days, 
which I am not yet old or worn out enough to have 
quite laid aside. 

" This cheerful feeling is combined with a portion 
of the universal quality which we ourselves name 
firmness, others obstinacy ; the quality which I sup- 
pose to be the fulcrum of all Stoical philosophy, and 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 175 

which, when the charmer Hope has utterly forsaken 
ns, may afford a grim support in the extreme of 
wretchedness. But there are other emotions which 
at times arise. When in my solitary walks round 
the Meadows or Carlton Hill, my mind escapes from 
the smoke and tarnish of those unfortunate persons 
with whom it is too much my fortune to associate; 
emotions which, if less fleeting, might constitute the 
principle of action, at once rational and powerful. 
It is difficult to speak upon these subjects without 
being ridiculous, if not hypocritical. Besides, the 
principles to which I allude, being little else than a 
more intense perception of certain truths universally 
acknowledged, to translate them into language would 
disgrace them to the rank of truisms. Therefore 
unwillingly I leave you to conjecture. It is proba- 
ble, however, that your good-natured imagination 
might lead you to overrate my resources if I neg- 
lected to inform you that, upon the whole, my mind 
is far from philosophical composure. The vicissi- 
tudes of our opinions do not happen with the celerity 
or distinctness of an astronomical phenomenon ; but 
it is evident that my mind at the present is under- 
going sundry alterations. When I review my past 
conduct, it seems to have been guided by narrow or 
defective views, and (worst of all) by lurking, deeply 
lurking affectation. I could have defended these 
views by the most paramount logic ; but what logic 



176 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

can withstand experience ? This is not the first, and 
if I live long it will not be the last, of my revolutions. 
Thus, velut unda supervenit undara^ error succeeds to 
error ; and thus while I seek a rule of life, life itself 
is fast flyiiig away. At the last, perhaps, my creed 
may be found too nearly to resemble the memorable 
Tristrapsedia of Walter Shandy, of which the minute 
and indubitable directions for Tristram's baby-clothes 
were finished when Tristram w^as in breeches. But 
I forget the aphorism with which I began my letter. 
Here, at least, let me conclude this long-winded ac- 
count of my own affairs, and request from you as 
particular a one of your own. We cannot help one 
another, my friend ; but mutual advice and encour- 
agement may easily be given and thankfully re- 
ceived. Will you go to Liverpool, or Eristol, or 
any whither, and institute a classico- mathematical 
academy? Or what say you to that asylum, or 
rather hiding-place, of poverty and discontent, Amer- 
ica? To be fabricating Lock No. 8 among the passes 
of the Alleghany !" 

[In the letter from which the above extract is 
taken, Carlyle mentions that he is attempting to 
learn German.] 

12. 

"Edinburgh, 15 Carnegie Street, April, 1819. 

"The despicable wretchedness of teaching can be 
known only to those who have tried it and to Him 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 177 

who made the heart and knows it all. One meets 
with few spectacles more afflicting than that of a 
young man with a free spirit, with impetuous though 
honorable feelings, condemned to waste the flower 
of his life in such a calling; to fade in it by slow 
and sure corrosion of discontent ; and, at last, ob- 
scurely and unprofitably to leave, with an indignant 
joy, the miseries of a world which his talents might 
have illustrated and his virtues adorned. Such things 
have been and will be. But surely in that better 
life which good men dream of, the spirit of a Kepler 
or a Milton will find a more propitious destiny. 

" * * * I long to hear that you have comfortably 
adjusted your establishment in the Island of Man. In 
the event of your going thither, you have only to ex- 
ert your abilities with the zeal and prudence of which 
you are capable; and I am convinced your hope 
of respectability and contentment will not be disap- 
pointed. Probably you are disposed to agree with 
the Pariah of Saint-Pierre, in thinking that " there 
is no real happiness without a good wife;" and it 
may be you are right. Let me advise you, however 
(you need not frown ; I am not going to jest, but to 
give most serious and weighty counsel), to examine 
and re-examine the circumstances before taking any 
step in consequence of this persuasion. A calendar 
month destroys the illusions of the imagination ; and 

if judgment be not interested, the rest of one's life 

8* 



178 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

is the very gall of bitterness. A narrow income, too ! 
It would break your heart — at least, I hope it would 
— to see the helplessness of an amiable woman (grant- 
ing that your choice was fortunate) exposed to the 
hard [illegible] from which you had undertaken, but 
were unable, to defend her. Of a truth, such a thing 
should give us pause. But I doubt not your good 
sense will render this advice superfluous. Your 
good -nature will pardon it, considering the motive 
which has called it forth. * * * As to my own 
projects, I am sorry, on several accounts, that I can 
give no satisfactory reply to your friendly inquiries. 
A good portion of my life is already mingled with the 
past eternity ; and for the future — it is a dim scene, 
on which my eyes are fixed as calmly and intensely 
as possible — to no purpose. The probability of my 
doing any service, in my day and generation, is cer- 
tainly not very strong. Friends are necessary, and 
I have few friends, and most of those few have their 
own concerns to mind. Health also is requisite, but 
my late precious trade and indolent habits (it must 
be owned) have left me little of that to boast of." 

13. 

''May, 1819. 

"It [first volume of Eousseau's " Confessions"] is 
perhaps the most remarkable tome I ever read. Ex- 
cept for its occasional obscenity, I might wish to see 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 179 

the remainder of the book, to try, if possible, to con- 
nect the character of Jean Jacques with my previous 
ideas of human nature. To say he is mad were to 
cut the knot without loosing it. At any rate, what 
could have induced any mortal, mad or wise, to rec- 
ollect and delineate such a tissue of vulgar debauch- 
ery, false-heartedness, and misery is quite beyond my 
comprehension. If we regret our exclusion from 
that Gallic constellation, which has set and found no 
successor to its brilliancy, the ^Memoirs' of Marmon- 
telor Rousseau's 'Confessions' should teach a vir- 
tuous Briton to be content with the dull sobriety of 
his native country." 

14. 

'' December, 1S19. 

" Yet, in general, I set a stubborn front to the 
storm, live in hope of better days. In wet weather, 
indeed, when the digestive apparatus refuses to per- 
form its functions, my world is sometimes black 
enough. Melancholy remembrances, 

*' 'Shades of departed joys around me rise, 
With many a face that smiles on me no more, 
With many a voice that thrills of transport gave, 
Now silent as the grass that tufts their grave ;' 

and dark anticipations of the coming time — such 
are the fruits of solitude and want of settled occu- 
pation. But this, also, is vanity." 



180 THOMAS CAELYLE. 



15. 

''March, 1820. 

" The thouglit that one's best days are hurrying 
darkly and uselessly away is yet more [illegible]. It 

is vain to deny it, my friend. I am altogether an 

creature. Timid, yet not humble ; weak, yet enthu- 
siastic, nature and education have rendered me en- 
tirely unfit to force my way among the thick-skinned 
inhabitants of this planet. Law, I fear, must be re- 
nounced ; it is a shapeless mass of absurdity and chi- 
cane ; and the ten years which a barrister commonly 
spends in painful idleness before arriving at employ- 
ment is more than my physical and moral frame 
could endure. Teaching school is but another word 
for sure and not very slow destruction ; and as to com- 
piling the wretched lives of Montesquieu, Montaigne, 
Montagu, etc., for Dr. Brewster, the remuneration 
will hardly sustain life. But I touch a string which 
generally yields a tedious sound to any but the ope- 
rator. I know you are not indifferent to the matter, 
but I would not tire you with it. The fate of one 
man is a mighty small concern in the grand whole, 
in this best of all possible worlds. Let us quit the 
subject with just one observation more, which I 
throw out for your benefit, should you ever come to 
need such an advice. It is to keep the profession 
you have adopted, if it be at all tolerable. A young 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 181 

man who goes forth into the world to seek his fort- 
une with those loftj ideas of honor and uprightness 
which a studious, secluded life naturally begets will, 
in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, if friends 
and other aids are wanting, fall into the sere, the 
yellow leaf ; and, if he quit not his integrity, end a 
wretched, though happily a short, career in misery 
and failure. 

" I was glad to learn that you had finished the pe- 
rusal of Homer. Certainly the blind bard is little 
obliged by your opinion of him. I believe, however, 
Candor is, and that is better. If from the admira- 
tion felt by Casaubon, Scaliger, and Co., and still more 
by the crowds that blindly follow them, we could 
subtract that portion which originates in the as hol- 
low admiration of others for the same object; and 
if, further, all affectation could be banished, I fear a 
very inconsiderable item would remain. In fact, 
Mseonides has had his day — at least the better part 
of it; the noon was five-and-twenty centuries ago; 
the twilight (for he set in 1453) may last for five-and- 
twenty other centuries ; but it, too, must terminate. 
Nothing that we know of can last forever. The 
very mountains are silently wasting away ; and long 
before eternity is done Mont Blanc might cease to 
be the pinnacle of Europe, and Chimborazo lie under 
the Pacific. Philosopliy and literature have a far 
shorter date. Error in the first succeeds to error, as 



182 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

wave to wave. Plato obscured the fame of Pythag- 
oras ; Cudworth and Kant, of Plato ; the Stagj^ite 
and his idle spawn have been swept away by Lord 
Bacon, himself to be swept away in his turn. Even 
in the narrow dominions of truth the contimiance 
of renown is not more durable ; each succeeding ob- 
server from a higher vantage-ground compresses the 
labors of his forerunner; and as the *Principia' of 
l^ewton is already swallowed up in the * Mecanique 
Celeste ' of Laplace, so likewise will it fare with the 
present Lord of the Ascendant. Poetry, they tell 
us, escapes the general doom ; but, even without the 
aid of revolutions or deluges, it cannot always escape. 
The ideas about which it is conversant must differ 
in every different age and country. The poetry of 
a Choctaw, I imagine, would turn chiefly on the pains 
of hunger, and the pleasure of catching .bears or 
scalping Chickasaws. In like manner, though some 
of the affections which Homer delineates are coexist- 
ent with the race, yet in the progress of refinement 
(or change) his mode of delineating them will appear 
trivial or disgusting, and the very twilight of his 
fame will have an end. Thus all things are dying, 
my friend — only ourselves die faster ! Man ! if I 
had but £200 a year, a beautiful little house in some 
laughing valley, three or four pure-spirited mortals 
who would love me and be loved again, together with 
a handsome library and — a great genius, I would in- 



THOMAS CABLYLE. 183 

vestigate the hallucinations that connect themselves 
with such ideas. At present I must revisit this 
nether sphere." 

16. 

"Mainhill, neak Ecclefechan, August 4, 1820. 

" * * * How could it have got into your head that 
you stood low in my estimation ? The words that 
conveyed such an impression must indeed have been 
ill-chosen whenever they were used. Graglia's Dic- 
tionary and the rest came safely as well as time- 
ously to hand; and though the articles had been 
entirely destroyed, do you think I would have quar- 
relled with you about so trifling an affair ? It has 
been my chance to meet with some whose sympathy 
has brightened, at times, the gloomy labyrinth of 
life ; but not to meet so many that I could sacrifice 
them upon grounds like this. I pray you put away 
such thoughts utterly. Our paths may lead us far 
asunder, but the place will be distant, the period re- 
mote, when I forget the calmness and happiness of 
bygone days, or the amiable qualities that contributed 
to make them calm and happy. I hope we shall 
meet together often, after all, when the sun is shining 
more brightly over us both ; and I feel a sort of con- 
fidence that neither of us will allow his spirit to be 
sullied or debased, though disastrous twilight should 
still overcast both the present and the future. 

« * * * ]\/[y iiealth has been indifferent for the 



184: THOMAS CAELTLE. 

last three years — seldom "oery bad ; I think it is im- 
proving. My spirits, of course, have been various ; 
my prospects are a shadowy void. Yet why should 
a living man complain ? The struggle is brief ; there 
are short yet most sweet pauses in it ; something of 
pride, too, at times, will gild its humble endurance ; 
and there is all eternity to rest in. 

" I could tell you much about the new Heaven and 
new Earth which a slight study of German literature 
has revealed to me ; but room fails me, and time — 
while * twilight gray ' and certain phenomena within 
give warning that I should mount the sheltie and 
take my evening ride." 

IT. 

"3/arcA, 1821. 

" * * * But toleration, man ! Toleration is all I 
ask, and all I am ready to give. Do you take your 
Lipsius, your Crombie, your Schweighauser, and let 
me be doing with Lake Poets, Mystics, or any trash 
I can fall in with. Why should we not cast an eye 
of cheering, give a voice of welcome to each other as 
our paths become mutually visible, though they are 
no longer one? * * * The most enviable thing, I 
often think, in all the world must be the soundest 
of the Seven Sleepers ; for he reposes deeply in his 
corner, and to him the tragi-comedy of life is as 
painless as it is paltry. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 185 

" ^ * * I have tried about twenty plans tliis win- 
ter in the way of authorship ; they have all failed. I 
have about twenty more to try ; and if it does but 
please the Director of all things to continue the mod- 
erate share of health now restored to me, I will make 
the doors of human society fly open before me yet, 
notwithstanding. M.yjpetards will not burst, or make 
only noise when' they do. I must mix them better, 
plant them more judiciously; they shall burst and 
do execution, too. 

" * * * I would not wish any one to launch, as I 
was forced to do, upon the roaring deep, so long as 
he can stay ashore. For me, the surges and the 
storm are round my skiff; yet I must on — on lest 
biscuit fail me, ere I reacli the trade-wind and sail 
-with others." 



18. 

''April, 182 U 

" * * * I am moving on, weary and heavy-laden, 
with very fickle health, and many discomforts — still 
looking forward to the future (brave future !) for all 
the accommodation and enjoyment that render life 
an object of desire. Then shall I no longer play a 
candle-snuffer's part in the great drama ; or if I do, 
my salary will be raised ; then shall — which you see 
is just use and wont." 



186 THOMAS CABLTLE. 



19. 

''October, 1821. 

<c -jf * 4f ]y[y Q^n experience of these things is tri- 
fling and unfavorable ; yet I do not reckon the prob- 
lem of succeeding in a school, and learning to remedy 
and endure all its grievances, one of extreme diffi- 
culty. First, as in every undertaking, it is necessary, 
of course, that you wish to succeed ; that you deter- 
mine firmly to let nothing break your equanimity, 
that you *lay aside every weight' — your philosophi- 
cal projects, your shyness of manner (if you are 
cursed wdth that quality), your jealous sense of inde- 
pendence — everything, in short, that circumstances 
may point out as detrimental to your interest with 
the people ; and then, being thus balanced and set 
in motion, your sole after-duty is to ' run wuth pa- 
tience;' you will reach the goal undoubtedly. Pub- 
lic favor in some sense is requisite for all men, but a 
teacher ought constantly to bear in mind that it is 
life and breath to him. Hence, in comparison with 
it nothing should be dear to him ; he must be meek 
and kindly, and soft of speech to every one, how 
absurd or offensive soever. To the same object he 
must also frequently sacrifice the real progress of 
his pupils, if it cannot be gained w^ithout affecting 
their peace of mind. The advantages of great learn- 
ing are so vague and distant, the miseries of constant 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 187 

whining are so immediate and manifest, that not 
one parent in a thousand can take the former in ex- 
change for the latter, with patience — not to speak of 
thankfulness. For the same reason, he must (if the 
fashion of the place require it) go about and visit his 
employers; he must cook them and court them by 
every innocent mode which the ever-varying posture 
of circumstances will suggest to a mind on the out- 
look for them. This seems poor philosophy, but it 
is true. The most diligent fidelity in discharging 
your duties will not serve you — by itself. Never 
forget this — it is mathematically certain. K men 
were angels, or even purely intellectual beings, hav- 
ing judgment, but no vanity or other passion, it 
might be different ; but as it is, the case becomes 
much more complicated. Few, very few, had not 
rather be cheated than despised; and even in the 
common walks of life, probity is often left to rot, 
without so much as being praised. It has the alget 
without the laudatur^ which is a most sorry busi- 
ness, doubtless. I have written down all this, my 

dear , not because I thought you wanted it ; on 

the contrary, I imagine your talents and manners 
and temper promise you a distinguished success; 
but because I thought the fruit of my painful expe- 
rience might be worth something to you, and that 
something, however small, I was anxious to offer you. 
Take it, and call it the widow's mite^ if you like. It 
is from your friend, T. Caklyle." 



188 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 



20. 

*'Apnl, 1822. 

" * * * It is a great truth which Gibbon sets forth 
somewhere, that letters are like alms, in one respect — 
symbols of friendship, as alms are of charity, though 
it is well known that the thing signified may exist 
in great activity without the symbol, in both cases. 
At all events, I hope you need no persuasion that I 
feel always great pleasure in writing to you ; not 
only as to a man whose talents and principle I re- 
spect, but also as to one with whom some of the 
most picturesque years of my life are inseparably 
connected in memory; whose name recalls to me a 
thousand images of the past, a thousand passages and 
half-forgotten moods of mind, which were not with- 
out a degree of pleasure while present, and which 
distance is every day rendering dearer, and covering 
with a softer and purer color. How many sheets 
have I scrawled to you, how many consultations and 
merrymakings and lonngings have we had together ! 
How many sage purposes and speculations have we 
formed by each other's counsel — how contentedly, 
though neither of us knew the right hand from the 
left ! I declare I shall always think of those days 
with a certain melancholy pleasure, and keep antici- 
pating the nights when we (old gray-heads, covered 
with honor as with years) shall yet sit by each other's 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 189 

liearth, and recount these achievements, and forget, 
in recollecting them, all the weakness and the weari- 
ness and cares and coldnesses of age. ' Chateaux en 
Espagne,' you say. ]^o matter, they look very hospi- 
table, and one loves to gaze upon them. 

" * * * One thing I am sure of, and congratulate 
you upon: it is the advantage you possess over me 
in having a fixed object in life ; a kind of chart of 
the course you are to follow, and the opportunity not 
only of enjoying all the pleasures which this affords 
in the meantime, but likewise of increasing your ex- 
perience, and thus at once, by the power of habit 
and of new skill in discharging your duties, increas- 
ing and accumulating more and more your means 
of happiness and usefulness. There is an immense 
blessing in your lot. I advise you (for two good rea- 
sons) to beware of letting it go. None but a wan- 
dering, restless pilgrim, who has travelled long and 
advanced little, anxious to proceed on his destined 
journey, but perpetually missing or changing his 
path, can tell you how fine a thing it is to have a 
beaten turnpike for your accommodation. Better to 
keep it, almost however miry and rugged, than to 
spring the hedge, and so lose yourself among foot- 
paths." 



190 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 



21. 

''December, 1822. 

" I need not advise you to keep a strict watch over 
your health ; you have already suffered too severely 
to need any such caution. The whole earth has no 
blessing within its circuit worthy to be named along 
with health. The loss of it I reckon the very dear- 
est item in the lot of man. I often think I could 
snap my fingers in the face of everything, if it were 
not for this. Pandora's box was but a toy compared 
with biliousness, or any other fundamental bodily 
disorder. Watch! watch! and think mens sana in 
corpore sano is the whole concern. 

" They [the probationers of the Scottish Kirk] are 
getting into kirks gradually, or lingering on the 
muddy shore of 'Private Teaching,' to see if any 
Charon will waft them across the Styx of Patronage 
into the Elysium of teinds and glebe. Success at- 
tend them all, poor fellows ! They are cruising in 
one small sound, as it were, of the great ocean of 
life ; their trade is harmless, their vessels leaky ; it 
will be hard if they altogether fail. * * * I sit here 
and read all the morning, or write ; regularly burn- 
ing everything I write. It is a hard matter that 
one's thoughts should be so poor and scanty, and at 
the same time the power of uttering them so difiicult 
to acquire. 



THOMAS CABLYLE. 191 

*'* * * Have you seen the Liberal? It is a 
most happy performance. Byron has a * Yision of 
Judgment' there; and a * Letter to the Editor of my 
Grandmother's Eeview,' of the wickedest and clever- 
est turn you could imagine. * * * This is a wild, 
fighting, loving, praying, blaspheming, weeping, 
laughing sort of world 1" 

22. 

*'Kennaird House, June 17, 1823. 

" Your letters have a charm to me, independently 
of their intrinsic merit. They are letters of my first 
and oldest correspondent ; they carry back the mind 
to old days — days perhaps in themselves not greatly 
better than those now passing over us, but invested 
by the kind treachery of imagination with hues which 
nothing present can equal. If I have any fault to 
m find with you it is in the very excess of what renders 
any correspondence agreeable — the excess of your 
complaisance, the too liberal [word wanting] which 
you offer at the shrine of other people's vanity. I 
might object to this with the more asperity did I not 
consider that flattery is in truth the sovereign emol- 
lient, the true oil of life, by which the joints of the 
great social machine, often stiff and rusty enough, are 
kept from grating, and made to play sweetly to and 
fro ; hence, that if you pour it on a thought too lav- 
ishly, it is an error on the safe side — an error which 



192 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

proceeds from the native warmness of your heart, 
and ought not to be quarrelled with too sharply ; not, 
at least, by one who profits, though unduly, by the 
commission of it. So I will submit to be treated as 
a kind of slender genius, since my friend will have 
it so. Our intercourse will fare but little worse on 
that account. We have now, as you say, known each 
other long, and never, I trust, seen aught to make us 
ashamed of that relation. I calculate that succeed- 
ing years will but more firmly establish our connec- 
tion, strengthening with the force of habit, and the 
memory of new kind offices, what has a right to sub- 
sist without those aids. Some time hence, when you 
are seated in your peaceful manse — you at one side 
of the parlor fire, Mrs. M. at the other, and two or 
three little M.'s, fine chubby urchins, hopping about 
the carpet — you will suddenly observe the door fly 
open, and a tall, meagre, care-worn figure stalk for- 
ward, his grim countenance lightened by unusual 
smiles, in the certainty of meeting with a cordial 
welcome. This knight of the rueful visage will, in 
fact, mingle with the group for a season, and be 
merry as the merriest, though his looks are sinister. 
I warn you to make provision for such emergencies. 
In process of time, I, too, must have my own peculiar 
hearth ; wayward as my destiny has hitherto been, 
perplexed and solitary as my path of life still is, I 
never cease to reckon on yet paying scot and lot on 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 193 

my own footing. Like the men of Glasgow, I shall 
have ' a house within myself ' (what tremendous ab- 
domina we householders have !) with every suitable 
appurtenance, before all is done ; and when friends 
are met, there is little chance that will be forgotten. 
We shall talk over old times, compare old hopes with 
new fortune, and secure comfort by Sir John Sin- 
clair's celebrated recipe, by being conifortahle. There 
are certainly brave times : would they could only be 
persuaded to come on a little faster. 

" Dunkeld is about the prettiest village I ever be- 
held. I shall not soon forget the bright sunset, when 
skirting the base of the " Birnam Wood " (there is no 
wood now) and asking for Dunsinane's high hill, 
which lies far to the eastward, and thinking of the 
immortal link-boy who has consecrated those two 
spots, which he never saw, with a glory that [will 
last] forever. I first came in sight of the ancient 
capital of Caledonia, standing in the lap of the 
mountains, with its quick broad river running by — 
its old gray cathedral, and its peak -roofed white 
houses peering through many groves of stately trees, 
all gilded from the glowing west— the whole so clear 
and pure and gorgeous as if it had been a city of 
fairy -land; not a vulgar clachan, where men sell 
stots, and women buy eggs by the dozen. I walked 
round and round it till late, the evening I left you. 

* * ^ The virtue of punctuality [is not considered] 

9 



194 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

in treatises of Ethics, but it is of essential impor- 
tance in the conduct of life; like common kitchen- 
salt, scarce heeded by cooks and purveyors, though 
without it their wares would soon run to rottenness 
and ruin." 

23. 

^^ August, 1824. 

" * * * I quitted the muddy beach of my native 
Scotland, ' stern nurse for a dyspeptic child,' with no 
other feelings towards it than I had long entertain- 
ed. Hard, rugged land ! I often think of its earnest 
features amid the rich scenes of the south. Distance 
is producing something of its usual effect: much 
that was unpleasant or repulsive is forgotten or soft- 
ened down ; and I think of the green landscape of 
Perthshire or the bleak simplicity of Annandale, 
which the sight of them was often far from giving. 
London astonishes, disgusts, and charms me. There 
are two or three persons there whom I should regret 
to know no more about. 

"* * * jg ^^^ ^ Scotchman. * * * Hard- 
ship, I suspect, has withered out the sensibilities of 
his nature, and turned him, finally, into a whisking, 
antithetical little editor. There is no significance in 
his aspect. His blue frock, and switch, and fashion- 
able wig, and clear, cold eyes, and dipt accents, and 
slender persiflage might befit a dandy. * * * Allan 
Cunningham I love : he retains the honest tones of 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 195 

liis native Mthsdale true as ever. He has a heart; 
a mind simple as a child's, but with touches of gen- 
ius singularly wild and original. is a kind 

little fellow, sings Italian airs, keeps daggers and 
other plaj-gear lying on his dressing-table, and is of 

the mob of gentlemen who write with ease. 

sprawls about as if his body consisted of four 



ill-conditioned flails. Coleridge is a steam-engine 
of a hundred horses' power, with the boiler burst. 
His talk is resplendent with imagery and the shows 
of thought ; you listen as to an oracle, and find your- 
self no jot the wiser. He is without beginning or 
middle or end. * * ^ A round, fat, oily, yet impatient 
little man, his mind seems totally beyond his own 
control ; he speaks incessantly, not thinking or [il- 
legible] remembering, but combining all these proc- 
esses into one, as a lazy housewife might mingle 
her soup and fish and beef and custard into one un- 
speakable mass, and present it true-heartedly to her 
astonished guest." 

24. 

"ScoTSBRiG, June 20, 1826. 

"* * * Be in no haste for a church; and feel 
very happy that you can do very comfortably with- 
out one, till the time come — whenever that may be. 
I begin to see that one is fifty times better for being 
heartily drilled in the school of experience, though 
beaten daily for years with forty stripes save one. 



196 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

I used to reckon myself very wretched, and now I 
find that no jot of my castigation could have been 
spared." 

25. 

*' 21 CoMLET Bank Row, 
Edinburgh, December 12, 1827. 

" My deak Sik, — My mother is arrived here on a 
short visit to us, and feels extremely anxious, among 
other purposes, to see her old friend, your aunt, Mrs. 
Hope, whom she parted with in Ecclefechan, many 
years ago, with very little expectation of ever meet- 
ing her again. I think you once told me the old 
lady lived somewhere in the outskirts of this city ; 
if so, it will not be impossible to bring about this in- 
terview, in which I myself feel somewhat interested, 
having still a vivid recollection of that disastrous gig 
expedition which I executed under your auspices on 
the Moffatt Eoad. Will you be so good as to send 
us a note of Mrs. Hope's address, and let us try if we 
can find her? The sooner the better, for my moth- 
er's time is limited. 

" I dare say you come often to Edinburgh : how is 
it that you never find your way to Comley Bank? 
Come hither, and I will show you my little cottage, 
and introduce you to my little wife, who will receive 
you with all graciousness as her husband's friend. 
Come down the very first time you visit Edinburgh. 
There is a spare bed here, and many a reminiscence 
of auld lang-syne. 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 197 

" I am grown quite a stranger in Glasgow of late 
years, now that Grahame and Irving and all have 
left it : yet the memory of that hospitable, jolly, well- 
living city still dwells with me fresh as ever, and 
hopes that a time is coming when I may behold it 
again. Meanwhile my true prayer is, in the words 
of your civic emblazonry. Let Glasgow flourish ! and 
you and all the honest hearts that have your being 
in it. 

" My mother brings no tidings from Grahame, ex- 
cept that he is still at Burnswark, irrigating meadows, 
salting bog hay, and striving by agricultural philoso- 
phy to make 'the desert blossom as the rose.' I 
heard that he had hopes of returning to your city 
and resuming traffic. I pray that it may be so, for 
it is a thousand pities so good and gifted a man were 
not working in his proper sphere, where alone he 
can be happy and wholesomely active. 

" I have heard several times from the Caledonian 
orator of late. He does not seem in the least mil- 
lenniary in his letters : but the same old friendly man 
we have long known him to be. And yet Lis print- 
ed works are enough to strike one blank with amaze- 
ment : for if the millennium is to come upon us in 
twenty years and odd months, ought we not to be 
turning a new leaf ? ought not you to shut up your 
ledger and I my note-book, and both of us to sit on 
the lookout, like Preventive-service men, spying and 



198 THOMAS CAKLTLE. 

scenting, with eje and nostril, whether there be 
aught of it in the wind ? Alas ! alas ! the madness 
of naan findeth no termination, but only new shapes, 
the old spirit being still the same. To the last there 
is and will be a bee in his bonnet, which only in 
every new generation buzzes with a new note. 

" I am scribbling here with considerable diligence, 
and not without satisfaction, though still in very poor 
health. In the course of years I hope to grow bet- 
ter; but now, such is the extent of my philosophy, 
I think I can partly do, whether I get better or not. 
My brother John, the doctor, is away in Germany, 
dissecting subjects, I suppose, at this very date, in 
Munich, the capital of Bavaria. He writes to us full 
of wonder at the marvels of that strange land. Mrs. 
C. and I have some thoughts of going thither and 
winter ourselves. But why should I darken counsel 
by words without wisdom ? Send us that address of 
Mrs. Hope as soon as possible ; come over to Comley 
Bank the first day or night you are in town ; and 
believe me ever, my dear sir, 

" Affectionately yours, 

"Thomas Caelyle." 
26. 

*' Craigenputtoch, May 31, 1828. 

a 4f * * Q ]\j;urray ! how we poor sons of Adam 
are shovelled to and fro ! Do you remember when 
we walked together, you escorting me, to the fifth 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 199 

mile-stone on the Dumfries road ? Two young pil- 
grims; yet even then the future looking stern and 
fateful in our eyes ! How many a weary foot have 
we had to travel since that hour ! and here we are 
still travelling, and must travel till the sun set and 
we get to our inn ! Well, let us travel cheerily ; for, 
after all, it is a brave journey : the great universe is 
around us ; time and space are ours ; and in that 
city whither we are bound it is said ^ there are many 
mansions.' " 

27. 

TO FERGUSON. 

"Annan, October 22, 1820. 

" Mt dear Ferguson, — I delayed writing to you 
chiefly for the old reason — want of anything to say ; 
and I have begun to write not because that want is 
at all sufficiently supplied, but because I would not 
vex your mind by unfounded suspicions that absence 
and oblivion are interchangeable terms in my vo- 
cabulary, or that the light of two months' experience 
has shown me any flaws in your character to the 
prejudice of our wavering though agreeable {sic) cor- 
respondence. I prize the frankness of your pro- 
cedure in writing a second time ; there is so much of 
the counting-house in formal regularity, one likes to 
see a friend's letter sometimes want the * I duly re- 
ceived your valuable favor, dated, and so forth.' It 
is not my inclination to put your generosity often to 



200 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

such trials ; but I promise you tlie present exercise 
of it shall not be thrown away. 

" The first letter, written late, appears also to have 
lingered long on the road. It reached me while in 
the heat of managing a small concern, which not 
long after called me into Yorkshire ; and I wilfully 
delayed sending an answer, till, the affair being final- 
ly adjusted, I might have it in my power to com- 
municate what seemed then likely to produce a con- 
siderable change in my stile (sic) of life. The mat- 
ter I allude to was a proposal to become ' a travelling 
tutor,' as they call it, to a young person in the North 
Riding, for whom that exercise was recommended, 
on account of bodily and mental weakness. They 
offered me £150 per annum, and withal invited me 
to come and examine things on the spot, before en- 
gaging. I went, accordingly, and happy was it I 
went. From description, I was ready to accept the 
place; from inspection, all Earndale would not have 
hired me to accept it. This boy was a dotard, a semi- 
vegetable ; the elder brother, head of the family, a 
two-legged animal without feathers, intellect, or vir- 
tue; and all the connections seemed to have the 
power of eating pudding, but no higher power. So 
I left the barbarous people — kindly, however, because 
they used me kindly, and crossed the Sark, with a 
higher respect for our own bleak fatherland than 
ever I had felt before. York is but a heap of bricks ; 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 201 

Jonathan Dryasdust (see 'Ivanlioe') is justly named. 
It was edifying to hear the principal of their Uni- 
tarian College lament the prevalence of mysticism 
in religion; and as to their newspaper editor, though 
made of lead, he is lighter than McCullogh's little 
finger. York is the Boeotia of Britain ; its inhabi- 
tants enjoy all sensual pleasures in perfection ; they 
have not even the idea of any other. Upon the 
whole, however, I derived great amusement from my 
journey. I viewed a most rich and picturesque coun- 
try. I conversed with all kinds of men, from graz- 
iers up to knights of the shire ; argued with them 
all, and broke specimens from the souls (if any), 
which I retain within the museum of my cranium 
for your inspection at a future day. 

" It is scarce a week since I returned from this ex- 
pedition ; and now my plans must all be altered. If 
I come to Edinburgh, which seems likely, few manu- 
scripts will accompany or follow me ; no settled pur- 
pose will direct my conduct, and the next scene of 
this fever dream is likely to be as painful as the last. 
Expect no account of my prospects there, for I have 
no prospects that are worth the name. I am like a 
being thrown from another planet on this dark ter- 
restrial ball, an alien, a pilgrim among its possessors ; 
I have no share in their pursuits ; and life is to me 
like a pathless, a waste, and howling wilderness — sur- 
face barrenness, its verge enveloped under 'dark- 

9* 



202 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

brown shade.' Yet hope will sometimes visit me, 
and, at the worst, complaint is weak, and idle if it 
were not. After all, one has a desperate struggle — 
and for what? For the bubble reputation, that we 
may fly alive through the mouths of men, and be 
thought happy, or learned, or great, by creatures as 
feeble and fleeting as ourselves. Sure it is a sorry 
recompense for so much [illegible] bustle and vex- 
ation. Do not leave your situation, if you can possi- 
bly avoid it. Experience shows it to be a fearful 
thing to be swept on by the roaring surge of life, and 
then to float alone — undirected on its restless, mon- 
strous bosom. Keep ashore while yet you may ; or, 
if you must to sea, sail under convoy ; trust not the 
waves without a guide. Yon and I are but pinnaces 
or cockboats yet ; hold fast by the Manilla ship ; do 
not let go the painter, however rough and grating. 
I am sorry you are tired of anatomy, and such things. 
I am tired too, but that does not mend the matter. 
Yet trust the best; nee deus inter sit is indeed true, 
naturally as well as poetically. Yet in spite of this, 
all things will and shall be well, if we believe aright. 
I designed to tell you a long tale about my most neg- 
lected studies, but I have no room. I have lived ri- 
otously with Schiller, Goethe, and the rest. They 
are the greatest men at present with me, 
" I am yours affectionately, 

"T. Caelyle." 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 203 



•28. 

TO LEIGH HUNT. 
*'Craigenputtoch, Dumfries, November 20, 1832. 

"My dear Sir, — I sent you a little note, by 
some conveyance I had, several months ago; wheth- 
er it ever came to hand is unknown here. We 
learned soon afterwards, from a notice in the J^ew 
Monthly Magazine, that you were again suffering in 
health. 

" If that note reached you, let this be the second ; 
if it did not, let this be the first little messenger ar- 
riving from the mountains to inquire for you, to 
bring assurance that you are lovingly remembered 
here, that nothing befalling you can be indifferent 
to us. 

"Being somewhat uncertain about the number of 
your house, I send this^ under cover to a friend who 
will punctually see that it reaches its address. If he 
deliver it in person, as is not impossible, you will 
find him worth welcoming. He is John Mill, eldest 
son of India Mill ; and, I may say, one of the best, 
clearest-headed, and clearest-hearted young men now 
living in London. 

"We sometimes fancy we observe you in Tait's 
and other periodicals. Have the charity sometime 
soon to send us a token of your being and well- 



204 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

being. We often speak of you here, and are very 
obstinate in remembering. 

" I still wish much you would write Hazlitt's Life. 
Somewhat of history lay in that too luckless man ; 
and you, of all I can think of, have the organ for 
discerning it and delineating it. 

" As for myself, I am doing little. The literary 
element is one of the most confused to live in, at all 
times ; the bibliopolic condition of this time renders 
it perfect chaos. One must write ' articles ' — write 
and curse (as Ancient Pistol ate his leek) ; what can 
one do ? 

"My wife is not with me to-day, otherwise she 
would surely beg to be remembered. You will offer 
my best wishes to Mrs. Hunt, to Miss, and the little 
gray-eyed philosopher who listened to us. 

" I asked you to come hither and see us, whenever 
you wanted to rusticate a month. Is that forever 
impossible ? 

"I remain, always, my dear sir, yours truly and 
kindly, T. Caelyle." 

29. 

" Ceaigenputtoch, April 18, 1834. 

" My deae Sie, — Your letters are rare, too rare, 
in their outward quality of sequence through the 
post ; but happily still rarer in their inward quality ; 
the hope and kind trustful sympathy of new eigh- 
teen dwelling unworn under hair which, you tell me, 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 205 

is getting tinged with gray. It is actually true we 
are coming to London ! So far has Destiny and a 
little resolution brought it. The kind Mrs. Austin, 
after search enough, has now (we imagine) found us 
a house which I hope and believe is not very far 
from yours. It shall be farther than my widest cal- 
culation if I fail to meet your challenge, and walk 
and talk with you to all lengths. I know not well 
how Chelsea lies from the Parish Church of Ken- 
sington, but it is within sight of the latter we are to 
be; and some ' trysting-tree ' (do you know so much 
Scotch ?) is already getting into leaf, as yet uncon- 
scious of its future honor between these two suburbs 
of Babylon. Some days, too, we will walk the whole 
day long, in wide excursion ; you lecturing me on 
the phenomena of the region, which to you are na- 
tive. My best amusement is walking ; I like, as well 
as Hadrian himself, to mete out my world with steps 
of my own, and to take possession of it. But if to 
this you add Speech ! Is not Speech defined to be 
cheerfuller than light, and the eldest daughter of 
Heaven ? I mean articulate discourse of reason, that 
comes from the internal heavenly part of us ; not the 
confused gabble, which (in so many millions) comes 
from no deeper than the palate of the mouth, which 
it is the saddest of all things to listen to — a thing 
that fills one alternately with sorrow and indignation, 
and at last almost with a kind of horror and terror. 



206 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

As if the world were a huge Bedlam, and the sacred 
speech of men had become an inarticulate jargon of 
hungry, cawing rooks ! 

" We laid down jour description of your house as 
the model our kind friend was to aim at. How far 
we have prospered will be seen. In rent we are 
nearly on a par. We also anticipate quiet, and some 
visitations of the heavenly air ; but, for the rest, ours 
will be no ' high- wainscoted ' dwelling, like Homer's 
and yours — no, some new-fangled brickwork which 
will tremble at every step, in which no four-footed 
thing can stand, but only three-footed, such as ' Hol- 
land Street, Kensington,' in this year of grace, can 
be expected to yield. However, there is a patch of 
garden, or, indeed, two patches. I shall have some 
little crib for my books and writing-table, and so do 
the best that may be. Innumerable vague forebod- 
ings hang over me as I write; meanwhile there is 
one grand assurance — the feeling that it was a duty, 
almost a necessity. My dame, too, is of resolution 
for the enterprise, and whatsoever may follow it ; so, 
forward in God's name ! 

" I have seen nothing of you for a long time, ex- 
cept what of the ' Delicacies of Pig-driving' my -£b- 
aminer once gave me. A most tickling thing, not a 
word of which can I remember ; only the whole y«c^ 
of it, pictured in such subquizzical, sweet-acid geni- 
ality of mockery, stands here, and, among smaller and 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 207 

greater things, will stand. If the two volumes are of 
that quality, they will be worth a welcome. I cannot 
expect them now till the beginning of May ; or per- 
haps I may even still find them with Eraser at Whit- 
suntide. Here among the moors they were best of all. 

" The starting of your Journal was a glad event 
for me ; it seems one of the hopefullest projects in 
these days : and surely it must be a strange public, 

one would think, in which prospers and 

Leigh Hunt fails. You must bear up steadily at 
first ; it is there, in this as in all things, that the 
grand difficulties lie. 

"Thornton need be under no uneasiness about 
Henry Inglis, from whom we heard not long ago, 
with some remark, too, of a very friendly character, 
about the traveller in question, and not the faintest 
hint about pounds or shillings. 

" I am writing nothing ; reading, above all things, 
my old Homer and Prolegomena enough; the old 
song itself with a most singular delight. Fancy me 
as reading till you see me ; then must another scene 
open. Your newspapers will interest me ; as for the 
unhappy * Sartor,' none can detest him more than my 
present self. There are some ten pages r\^t\j fused 
and harmonious ; the rest is only welded, or even ag- 
glomerated, and may be thrown to the swine. All 
salutations from us both ! 

" Yalete et nos amate ! T. Caelyle." 



208 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

30.^ 

*' Chelsea, June 17, 1850. 

" Dear Hukt, — I have just finished your * Auto- 
biography,' which has been most pleasantly occupy- 
ing all my leisure these three days ; and you must 
permit me to write you a word upon it, out of the 
fulness of the heart, while the impulse is still fresh, 
to thank you. This good book, in every sense one of 
the best I have read this long while, has awakened 
many old thoughts which never were extinct, or even 
properly asleep, but which (like so much else) have 
had to fall silent amid the tempests of an evil time — 
Heaven mend it ! A word from me once more, I 
know, will not be unwelcome while the world is talk- 
ing of you. 

" Well, I call this an excellent good book, by far 
the best of the autobiographic kind I remember to 
have read in the English language ; and, indeed, ex- 
cept it be Boswell's of Johnson, I do not know where 
we have such a picture drawn of human life as in 
these three volumes. 

" A pious, ingenious, altogether human and worthy 
book, imaging, with graceful honesty and free felic- 

* This letter, though most of it appeared in an edition of Leigh 
Hunt's "Autobiography," is here for the first time printed verbatim^ 
and therefore included among others which appear here for the first 
time. 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 209 

ity, many interesting objects and persons on your 
life-path, and imaging throughout, what is best of 
all, a gifted, gentle, patient, and valiant human soul, 
as it buffets its way through the billows of the time, 
and will not drown, though often in danger ; cannot 
be drowned, but conquers, and leaves a track of radi- 
ance behind it : that, I think, comes out more clearly 
to me than in any other of your books ; and that, I 
can venture to assure jou, is the best of all results 
to realize in a book or written record. In fact, this 
book has been like an exercise of devotion to me ; I 
have not assisted at any sermon, liturgy or litany, this 
long while, that has had so religious an effect on me. 
Thanks in the name of all men ! And believe, along 
with me, that this book will be welcome to other 
generations as well as ours. And long may you live 
to write more books for us; and may the evening 
sun be softer on you (and on me) than the noon 
sometimes was ! 

"Adieu, dear Hunt (you must let me use this 
familiarity, for I am now an old fellow too, as well 
as you). I have often thought of coming up to see 
you once more; and perhaps I shall, one of these 
days (though horribly sick and lonely, and beset with 
spectral lions, go whitherward one may) ; but, whether 
I do or not, believe forever in my regard. And so 
God bless you ! prays heartily T. Caklyle." 



210 THOMAS CARLYLE. 



31. 

" Chelsea, Jwne 21. 

"Dear Hunt, — Many kind thanks! I saw the 
book, and sent thanks for it by Yincent ; but I did 
not know, till this minute, what other pleasant things 
lay in the letter itself, which the dusk and the hurry 
would not suffer me to read at the moment. By all 
means, yes, yes ! My wife is overjoyed at the pros- 
pect of seeing you again in the good old style. Cour- 
age, and do not disappoint us. We are here, quite 
disengaged, and shall be right glad to see you. 

"I hope Yincent explained what a miscellaneous 
uproar had accidentally got about me to-night, and 
how for want of light, as well as of time, I missed 
the kernel of the letter altogether. Tuesday, re- 
member! We dine about ^ve, and tea comes nat- 
urally about seven — sooner if you will come sooner. 

" One of my people to-night, an accomplished kind 
of American, has begged a card of introduction to 
you. He is a son of a certain noted Judge Story ; 
is himself, I believe, a kind of sculptor and artist, as 
well as lawyer. Pray receive him if he call ; you 
will find him a friendly and entertainable and enter- 
taining man. 

"And so, till Tuesday evening, 

" Yours with all regard, 

" T. Caelyle." 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 21l 

32. 

TO WILLIAM BRIDGES. 

"Chelsea, November 19, 1846. 

" My deak Sie, — I have read your letter, ' History 
in a l!Tutshell,' with much pleasure. It is surely an 
eloquent, pious, melodious conception of that im- 
measurable matter; and, if you chose to elaborate 
it further, might lead you into all manner of interest- 
ing analogies and contrasts. I like well, in particu- 
lar, that co-ordinating of sacred events with events 
called 'Profane.' We ought to know always that 
if any one of them be sacred, they are all sacred. 
That is the right use to make of the, at present, very 
burdensome 'Hebrew element' in our affairs. In 
this way we shall conquer it, not let it conquer us — 
which latter is a very bad result, worse even than 
running from it ; as the world in these centuries, as 
a lad-hest, is very much inclined to do. I should be 
glad to know more minutely what you are about of 
late ; and to see you here some evening when you 
feel inclined to walk so far. 

" Yours very truly, 

" T. Caelyle." 



212 THOMAS CABLTLE. 

33. 
TO A LITERARY FEIEND. 
"The Grange, Alresfokd, Hants, September 26, 1848. 

" Dear , — I know not what little tiff this is 

that has arisen between and yon, but I wish 

much it would handsomely blow over, and leave all 
of you in the simple state of as you were. Eeflect- 
ine: on the enclosed little note that reached me this 
morning, I decide that one of the usefullest things I 
could, in the first place, attempt in regard to it would 
be to try if hereby the matter could not be quashed, 
and people who are certainly good friends, and who 
are probably of real service to one another, be pre- 
vented from flying asunder on slight cause. 

" This controversy I know well enough to be per- 
petual and universal between Editor and Contribu- 
tor: no law can settle it; the best wisdom can do 
no better than suppress it from time to time. On 
's side I will counsel patience, everywhere need- 
ful in human affairs ; on your side, I would say that 
though an editor can never wholly abandon his right 
to superintend, which will mean an occasional right 
to alter, or at least to remonstrate and propose altera- 
tions, yet it is in general wise, when, as in this case, 
you have got a really conscientious, accurate, and 
painstaking contributor, to be sparing in the exercise 
of the right, and to put up with various unessential 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 213 

things rather than forcibly break in to amend them. 
You have perhaps but a faint idea how much it dis- 
tresses and disheartens such a man as I describe; 
nay, lames him in the practice of his art, and tends 
to put his conscience especially into painful abey- 
ance. *What is the use of me?' his literary con- 
science says ; ' better for us all that I went to sleep.' 
When a man has a literary conscience — which I be- 
lieve is a very rare case — this result is a most sad 
one to bring about ; hurtful not to himself only, as 
you may well perceive. In fact, I think a serious 
sincere man cannot very well write if he have the 
perpetual fear of correction before his eyes ,' and if 
I were the master of such a one, I should certainly 
endeavor to leave him (within very wide limits) his 
own director, and to let him feel that he was so, and 
responsible accordingly. 

" Forgive me if I interfere unduly with your af- 
fairs. If the case be that you perceive, after the 

trial, that is no longer worth his wages to 

the , then all is said, and I have not a word to 

object. But if it be not so, and this is but a transi- 
tory embarrassment of detail, then it will be a service 
to both parties if I can get it ended within the safe 
limits. Of the fact, how it may stand, I know noth- 
ing at all, and you alone can know. 

" All help that I can give in other courses of 

enterprise I have, of course, to promise him ; but I 



214 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

will advise him first of all that a reconciliation with 
you, if any ground he feels feasible were offered, 
would seem to me by far the desirablest course. 

With kind regards to , to whom, indeed, as much 

as to you, these remarks address themselves, in great 
haste, yours, always truly, T. Caeltle. 

" We have been here with country friends near a 
month, and are not to be in Chelsea, I imagine, for 
some ten days. T. C." 

34. 

TO ALEXANDER IKELAOT). 

"Chelsea, October 15, 1847. 

"My dear Sir, — By a letter I had very lately 
from Emerson — which had lain, lost and never 
missed, for above a month in the treacherous post- 
office of Buxton, where it was called for and de- 
nied—I learn that Emerson intended to sail for this 
country ' about the first of October,' and infer there- 
fore that probably even now he is near Liverpool or 
some other of our ports. Treadmill, or other as em- 
phatic admonition, to that scandalous postmaster of 
Buxton ! He has put me in extreme risk of doing 
one of the most unfriendly and every way unpar- 
donable-looking things a man could do. 

"Not knowing in the least to what port Emerson 
is tending, where he is expected, or what his first 
engagements are, I find no way of making my word 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 215 

audible to him in time, except that of intrusting it, 
with solemn charges, to you, as here. Pray do me 
the favor to contrive in some sure way that Emerson 
may get hold of that note the instant he lands in 
England. I shall be permanently grieved otherwise ; 
shall have failed in a clear duty (were it nothing 
more) which will never probably in my life offer 
itself again. Do not neglect, I beg very much of 
you ; and, on the whole, if you can get Emerson put 
safe into the express train, and shot up hither, as the 
first road he goes! That is the result we aim at. 
But the note itself, at all events, I pray you get that 
delivered duly, and so do me a very great favor for 
which I depend on you. 

" It is yet only two days since I got home, through 
Keswick and the Lake country; nor has my head yet 
fairly settled from the whirl of so many objects, and 
such rapid whirls of locomotion, outward and in- 
ward, as the late weeks have exposed me to. To- 
day, therefore, I restrict myself to the indispensable, 
and will add nothing more. 

" Kind regards to Ballantyne and Espinasse. Hope 
your School Society prospers. Glad shall I be to 
learn that your scheme, or any rational or even semi- 
rational scheme, for that most urgently needful ob- 
ject, promises to take effect among those dusty pop- 
ulations! Of your Program, as probably I men- 
tioned, there remains with me no copy now. 

" Yours very truly, T. Caelyle." 



216 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

35. 

** Chelsea, March 18, 1863. 

"Deak Ieeland, — I am glad to hear from you 
again, and much obliged for those two portraits of 
Emerson. The painted one I cannot endure, but 
the actual shadow of the sun (who aims at nothing 
but the truth) is beautiful, and really interesting to 
me. Wonderfully little oldened; has got a black 
wig, I see ; nothing else changed ! 

" Two or three weeks ago there was forwarded to 
me a clipping from a Manchester newspaper (the Ex- 
aminer, I think) — some letter from somebody about 
a wonderful self-condemnatory MS. by Frederick 
the Great, gathered at Berlin by some Duke of Ro- 
vigo, for the endless gratitude of the curious. I had 
not heard of the monstrous platitude at all till then, 
but guessed then what it would be — an old acquaint- 
ance of mine, truly a thrice-brutal stupidity, which 
has had red-hot pokers indignantly run through it 
about ten times, but always revives and steps forth 
afresh with new tap of the parish drum — there being 
no * parish ' in the universe richer in prurient dark- 
ness and flunkey malevolence than ours is ! I set 
Neuberg upon it, in the Athenceum, but know not 
what he made of it. No editor, in my time, has 
crowned himself with such a pair of ears as he of the 
Williams and Korgate periodical. It is a clear fact, 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 217 

though not clear in England, that here is the most 
brutal of moon-calves lately heard of in any coun- 
try ; that to have one moment's belief, or doubt, on 
such a subject is to make affidavit that your knowl- 
edge of Frederick and his affairs is zero and less. 
Would to Heaven I were ' done with them !' I never 
in my life was held in such hurry — to last six months 
yet. Yours ever, T. Caultle." 

36.-^ 

TO A TOUNa LADY FEIEND. 
" 5 Great Chetne Row, Chelsea, 21sf, 1 866. 

" Deab young Lady, — Your appeal to me is very 
touching, and I am heartily sorry for you, if I could 
but help at all. In very great want of time, among 
other higher requisites, I write a few words, which, I 
hope, may at least do no harm, if they can do little 
good. Herein, as in many other cases, the ' patient 
must minister unto himself;' no best of doctors can 
do much. The grand remedy against such spiritual 
maladies and torments is to rise upon them vigor- 
ously from without, in the way of practical work 

* This letter is not in Mr. Ireland's collection. It was written to a 
lady of my acquaintance when she was quite a young girl. She had 
passed into a somewhat morbid state of mind and feeling about her- 
self, and wrote to the man vi\\o appeared to her almost a prophet. 
The letter reveals that tenderness of Carlyle towards the young which 
was really the unsatisfied part of his nature, as I believe was recog- 
nized by him towards the last. — M. D. C. 

10 



218 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

and performance. Onr thoughts, good or bad, are 
not in our command, but every one of ns has at all 
hours duties to do^ and these he can do negligently, 
like a slave; or faithfully, like a true servant. ''Do 
the duty that is nearest thee ' — that first, and that 
well; all the rest will disclose themselves with in- 
creasing clearness, and make their successive demand. 
Were your duties never so small, I advise you, set 
yourself with double and treble energy and punctu- 
ality to do them, hour after hour, day after day, in 
spite of the devil's teeth ! That is our one answer to 
all inward devils, as they used to be called. ' This 
I can do, O Devil, and I do it, thou seest, in the name 
of God.' It is astonishing and beautiful what swift 
exorcism lies in this course of proceeding, and how 
at the first real glimpse of it all foul spirits and 
sickly torments prepare to vanish. 

" I hope you will not often have experience of this, 
poor child. And don't object that your duties are 
so insignificant ; they are to be reckoned of infinite 
significance and alone important to you. Were it 
but the more perfect regulation of your apartments, 
the sorting -away of 3- our clothes and trinkets, the 
arranging of your papers — 'Whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do, do it with all thy might,' and all thy 
worth and constancy. Much more, if your duties 
are of evidently higher, wider scope ; if you have 
brothers, sisters, a father, a mother, weigh earnestly 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 219 

what claim does lie upon you, on behalf of each, and 
consider it as the one thing needful, to pay them 
more and more honestly and nobly what you owe. 
What matter how miserable one is, if one can do 
that? That is the sure and steady disconnection 
and extinction of whatsoever miseries one has in 
this world. Other spiritual medicine I never do dis- 
cover ; neither, I believe, does other exist, or need to 
exist. 

" For the rest, dear child, you are evidently too 
severe upon yourself; these bad thoughts don't make 
you a ^ wicked girl,' not until you yield to them ; the 
excess of your remorse and self-abhorrence is itself 
proof of some height of nobleness in you. We have 
all of us to be taught by stripes, by sufferings — won't 
learn otherwise. Courage, courage ! As to fasting, 
penance, etc., that is all become a ghastly matter ; 
have nothing to do with that ; worh, work, and be 
careful about nothing else. Choose with your ut- 
most skill among your companions and coevals some 
real associates; be not too much alone with your 
thoughts, w^hich are by nature bottomless. Finally, 
be careful of your health ; bodily ill-health, unknown 
to your inexperience, may have much to do with the 
miseries. Farewell. T. Caelyle." 



220 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

37. 

RALPH WALDO EMEESON TO ALEXANDER IRELAND. 

"Liverpool, August 30, 1833. 

" My dear Sir, — A shower of rain, which hinders 
my visiting, gives me an opportunity of fulfilling my 
promise to send you an account of my visit to Mr. 
Carlyle and to Mr. Wordsworth. I was fortunate 
enough to find both of them at home. Mr. C. lives 
among some desolate hills in the parish of Dunscore, 
fifteen or sixteen miles from Dumfries. He had 
heard of my purpose from his friend who gave me 
my letter, and insisted on dismissing my gig, which 
went back to Dumfries to return for me the next 
day in time to secure my seat in the evening coach 
for the South. So I spent near twenty-four hours 
with him. He lives with his wife, a most agreeable 
and accomplished woman, in perfect solitude. There 
is not a person to speak to Avithin seven miles. He 
is the most simple, frank, amiable person. I became 
acquainted with him at once; we walked over sev- 
eral miles of hills and talked upon all the great ques- 
tions which interest us most. The comfort of meet- 
ing a man of genius is that he speaks sincerely, that 
he feels himself to be so rich that he is above the 
meanness of pretending to knowledge which he has 
not; and Carlyle does not pretend to have solved 
the great problems, but rather to be an observer of 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 221 

tlieir solution as it goes forward in the world. I 
asked him at what religions development the con- 
cluding passage in his piece in the Edinburgh Remew 
upon German literature (say five years ago), and 
some passages in the piece called ' Characteristics,' 
pointed. He replied that he was not competent to 
state it even to himself; he wanted rather to see. 
My own feeling was that I had met with men of far 
less power who had yet greater insight into religious 
truth. He is, as you might guess from his papers, 
the most catholic of philosophers ; he forgives and 
loves everybody, and wishes each to struggle on in 
his own place and arrive at his own ends. But his 
respect for eminent men, or rather his scale of emi- 
nence, is rather the reverse of the popular scale. 
Scott, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Gibbon — even Bacon — 
are no heroes of his. Stranger yet, he hardly ad- 
mires Socrates, the glory of the Greek world; but 
Burns and Samuel Johnson. Mirabeau, he said, in- 
terested him ; and I suppose whoever else has given 
himself with all his heart to a leading instinct, and 
has not calculated too much. But I cannot think of 
sketching even his opinions, or repeating his conver- 
sation here. I will cheerfully do it when you visit 
me in America. He talks finely, seems to love the 
broad Scotch, and I loved him very much at once. I 
am afraid he finds his entire solitude tedious ; but I 
could not help congratulating him upon his treasure 



222 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

in his wife, and I hope they will not leave the moors, 
'tis so much better for a man of letters to nurse him- 
self in seclusion than to be filed down to the com- 
mon level bj the compliances and imitations of city 
society. 

"The third day afterwards I called upon Mr. 
Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. He received me 
with much kindness, and remembered up all his 
American acquaintance. He had very much to say 
about the evils of superficial education, both in this 
country and in mine. He thinks the intellectual 
tuition of society is going on out of all proportion 
faster than its moral training, which last is essential 
to all education. He doesn't wish to hear of schools 
of tuition ; it is the education of circumstances which 
he values, and much more to this point. He says 
that he is not in haste to publish more poetry, for 
many reasons; but that what he has written will at 
some time be given to the world. He led me out 
into a walk in his grounds, where, he said, many 
thousands of his lines were composed, and repeated 
to me those beautiful sonnets which he has just fin- 
ished, upon the occasion of his recent visit to Fin- 
gal's Cave at Staffa. I hope he will print them 
speedily. The third is a gem. He was so benevo- 
lently anxious to impress upon me my social duties 
as an American citizen that he accompanied me near 
a mile from his house, talking vehemently, and ever 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 223 

and anon stopping short to imprint his words. I 
noted down some of his words when I got home, and 
you may see them in Boston, Massachusetts, when 
you will. I enjoyed both my visits highly, and shall 
always esteem your Britain very highly in love for 
its wise and good men's sake. I remember with 
much pleasure my visit to Edinburgh, and my short 
acquaintance with yourself. It will give me great 
pleasure to hear from you — to know your thoughts. 
Every man that was ever born has some that are pe- 
culiar. Present my respects to your father and fam- 
ily. Your friend and servant, 

" E. Waldo Emeeson." 



Part IV. 

LETTERS ADDRESSED TO 

Mrs. basil MONTAGU and B. W. PROCTER 

BY 

Mk. THOMAS CAELYLE 



10* 



lETTERS OF THOMAS CARLYLE 

ADDRESSED TO 

Mks. basil MOI^TAGU and B. W. PKOCTER. 



TO MRS. MONTAGU, 25 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON. 

"Mainhill, Ecclefechan, 20th May, 1825. 

" My dear Madam, — I were inexcusable had this 
long silence been wilful: the kind and delightful 
letter which you sent me merited at least a prompt 
and thankful answer. Your generous anxieties for 
my welfare should not have been met by months of 
total silence. My apology is a trite but yet a faithful 
one. Your letter reached me, after various retarda- 
tions, in a scene of petty business and petty engage- 
ment; and I had no choice but either to write inani- 
ties in reply to elegant and friendly sense, or to wait 
with patience for a calmer day. 

" That calmer day has not yet come. Ever since I 
left you I have been so shifted and shovelled to and 
fro among men and things of the most discordant 
character that my thoughts have altogether lost 



228 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

their regular arrangement. The small citadel of my 
intellectual identity has almost yielded to so many 
inroads ; at least the garrison, weary of never-ending 
battle and imperfect conquest, have now locked the 
gates, and scarcely ever sally out at all. I live with- 
out thinking or theorizing, as the passing hour directs; 
and any true expression of myself in writing, or even 
speech, is a problem of unusual difficulty. You see 
my situation : 1 have been disturbed and dissipated 
till I have become exhausted and stupid. Yesterday 
I was buying chairs and curtains, and even crockery, 
and there is still no rest till three weeks after Whit- 
sunday! Add to all this that three days ago, in 
cutting sticks for certain rows of peas which I am 
cultivating here, I tore my thumb, so that it winces 
every line I write ! But can the Ethiopian change 
his skin, or the dolt his dulness, by confession and 
complaint? I had much rather you should think 
me stupid than ungrateful ; so I write to-day without 
further explanation or apology, which would but ag- 
gravate the evil either way. When I think of all 
your conduct towards me, I confess I am forced to 
pronounce it magnanimous. From the first, you 
had faith enough in human nature to believe that 
under the vinegar surface of an atrabiliar character 
there might lurk some touch of principle and affec- 
tion ; notwithstanding my repulsive aspect, you fol- 
lowed me with unwearied kindness, while near you ; 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 229 

and now that I am far off, and you suspect me of 
stealing from you the spirit of your most valued 
friend, you still think tenderly of me ; you send me 
cheering words into my solitude. Amid these rude 
moors a little dove-like messenger arrives to tell me 
that I am not forgotten, that I still live in the mem- 
ories and wishes of some noble souls. Believe ine, I 
am not unthankful for this ; I am poor in heart, but 
not entirely a bankrupt. There are moments when 
the thought of these things makes me ten years 
younger, when I feel with what fervid gratitude I 
should have welcomed sympathy, or the very show 
of sympathy, from such a quarter, had it then been 
offered me ; and vow that yet^ changed as matters 
are, you shall not escape me, that I will yet under- 
stand you and love you, and be understood and loved 
by you. I did you injustice; I never saw you till 
about to lose you. Base Judean that I was ! Can 
you forgive without forgetting me? I hope yet to 
be near you long and often, and to taste in your 
society the purest pleasure, that of fellow-feeling 
with a generous and cultivated mind. How rare it 
is in life, and what were life without it ! Forgive 
me if you can. If my affection and gratitude have 
any value in your eyes, you are like to be no loser 
by my error. I felt it before I left you ; I feel it still 
more deeply now. 

"I must also entreat you to free me from the charge 



230 THOMAS CAELTLE. 

of alienating Mr. Irving from the friend whom he 
should value most. I have no such influence as you 
ascribe to me ; and if I had, I hope I should be sorry 
so to use it. Edward Irving must be blind indeed 
if he does not see that you love him with the affec- 
tion of a mother ; and he were no longer my Edward 
if this itself did not bind him to you. Depend on 
it, my dear madam, for this time you are wrong. 
Our friend does not love you or esteem you less : it 
is only his multifarious purposes and ever-shifting 
avocations that change the outward aspect of his con- 
duct. He was my earliest, almost my only friend, 
and yet for two years after he began to reign among 
you, I could not wring a single letter from him ! 
You must tolerate such things in him, and still be 
kind to him, and not forsake him ; in his present cir- 
cumstances, however it may fare with him, your 

counsel might be doubly precious. For Mrs. 

also I must say a friendly word. She does not hate 
you; she respects you, and desires your friendship. 
Will you believe that I had actually engaged to be 
her mediator with you, and to bring about an inti- 
macy which I saw might be so profitable to her ! 
On a narrower inspection, I renounced the project in 
despair ; yet I feel convinced you would like her, 
were she fully known to you. That you disagreed 
at first cannot be strange to me ; her primary impres- 
sion of you was in some degree like my own, and you 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 231 

liad not the toleration for her inexperience which 
you had for mine. I confess I have still some hope 
from the flight of years ; where one sees a want and 
the means of supplying it, one would gladly bring 

about a combination. Had you been Mrs. 's 

sister, she had never been a mystic devotee, and 
never trod the thorny paths through which her ve- 
hement, sincere, and misdirected spirit is struggling 
after what, in all its forms, is the highest aim of 
mortals — Moral Truth. But the [letter torn] judg- 
ment of character must be fallible in your eyes! 
[torn] will go for nothing. 

" But ill-success in this attempt does not deter me 
from a new one. You know Miss Welsh of Hadding- 
ton, if not in name, at least in character and from her 
friends. I was with her at her mother's when you 
wrote to me. Jane knew the writer by the portrai- 
ture of two not unfriendly friends, admired and liked 
the letter, and begged of me to let her keep it. 

" She had refused an invitation to Pentonville : one 
of her chief regrets in declining it was the veto put 
on her commencing an acquaintance with you. 

" She asked would you not write to Tier. I engaged 
to try, and now will you % Can you ? 

" This young lady is a person whom you will love 
and tend as a daughter when you meet ; an ardent, 
generous, gifted being, banished to the pettinesses of 
a country town ; loving, adoring the excellent in all 



232 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

its phases, but without models, advisers, or sympathy. 
Six years ago she lost her father, the only person 
who had ever understood her: since that hour she 
has never mentioned his name ; she never alludes to 
him yet without an agony of tears. 

" It was Mr. Irving's wish, and mine, and, most of 
all, her own, to have you for her friend ; that she 
should live beside you till she understood you ; that 
she might have at least one model to study, one 
woman with a mind as warm and rich to show her 
by living example how the most complex destiny 
might be wisely managed. Separated by space, could 
you draw near to one another by the imperfect 
medium of letters ? Jane thinks it would abate the 
'awe' which she must necessarily feel on first meet- 
ing with you personally. She wishes it ; I also if it 
were attainable : is it not ? 

" I should now depict my doings and my circum- 
stances, my farming and my gardening, literature 
and dietetics. All this demands another sheet, which 
I trust you will very soon afford me opportunity of 
sending. I am getting healthier and happier, living 
by the strictest letter of the Badamian Code, and 
hoping steadfastly to conquer the baleful monster 
w^hi-ch has crushed me to the dust so long. Do write 
as soon as possible ; and do not pay the postage. 

" I am unjust to you no more, but ever most sin- 
cerely yours, Thomas Caelyle." 



THOMAS CARLTLE. 233 

" You will make my best respects to Mr. Montagu, 
and to Mrs. and Mr. Procter. The latter, I hope, will 
by-and-by bethink him of his promise, and let me 
have a sheet of literary news. 

" Is my dear Badams with you ? Did you get the 
book I sent for him ? Excuse this miserable letter. I 
am sick and in confusion. IText time I will do better." 



TO -MES. MONTAGU, 25 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON". 
"21 CoMLBY Bank, 25th December, 182G. 

"Mt dear Madam, — At length my most nervous 
bookseller has determined, even in these 'worst of 
times,' as he calls them, on sending forth his literary 
cargo ; an heroic resolution, which he has not adopted 
till after the most painful consultation, and after cal- 
culating as if by astrological science the propitious 
day and minute indicated by the horoscope of the 
work. I know not whether it is right to laugh at 
this poor profit-and-loss philosopher in his pitiable 
quandary ; for his one true God being Mammon, he 
does worship him with an edifying devoutness ; but, 
at all events, I may rejoice that this favorable con- 
junction of the stars has at length actually occurred, 
which after four months' imprisonment in Ballan- 
tyne's warehouses now takes this feeble concern 
finally off my hands, and enables me, among many 
other important duties, to discharge not the least 
important one — that of paying my debt to you. 



234 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

" I have really owed you long, but you are a patient 
creditor, and know too, I am persuaded, that though 
letters are the symbol of attention and regard, the 
thing signified may often exist in full strength with- 
out the sign. Indeed, indeed, my dear madam, I am 
not mad enough to forget you : the more I see of the 
world and myself the less tendency have I that way, 
the more do I feel that in this my wilderness journey 
I have found but one Mrs. Montagu, and that, except 
in virtue of peculiar good-fortune, I had no right to 
calculate on even finding one. A hundred times do 
I regret that you are not here, or I there : but I say 
to myself, we shall surely meet again on this side the 
wall of I^ight ; and you will find me wiser, and I shall 
know you better, and love and reverence you more. 
Meantime, as conscience whispers, what are protesta- 
tions ? l^othing, or worse than nothing : therefore 
let us leave them. 

" Of my late history I need not speak, for you al- 
ready know it : I am wedded ; to the best of wives, 
and with all the elements of enjoyment richly min- 
istered to me, and health — rather worse than even 
it was wont to be. Sad contradiction ! But I were 
no apt scholar if I had not learned long ago, with 
my friend Tieck, that *in the fairest sunshine a 
shadow chases us ; that in the softest music there is 
a tone which chides.' 

" I sometimes hope that I shall be well : at other 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 235 

times I determine to be wise in spite of sickness, 
and feel that wisdom is better even than health ; and 
I dismiss the lying cozener Hope entirely, and fan- 
cy I perceive that even the rocky land of Sorrow is 
not without a heavenly radiance overspreading it, 
lovelier than aught that this Earth, with all its joys, 
can give us. At all events, what right have we to 
murmur ? It is the common lot : the Persian King 
could not find three happy men in the wide world 
to write the names of on his queen's tomb, or the 
Philosopher would have recalled her from death. 
Every son of Adam has his task to toil at, and his 
stripes to bear for doing it wrong. There is one 
deadly error we com mit at our entrance on life, and 
sooner or later we must lay it aside, for till then 
there is neither peace nor rest for us in this world : 
we all start, I have observed, with the tacit per- 
suasion that whatever become of others, we (the 
illustrious all-important we) are entitled of right to 
be entirely fortunate, to accumulate all knowledge, 
beauty, health, and earthly felicity in our sacred 
person, and so pass our most sovereign days in rosy 
bowers, with Distress never seen by us, except as an 
interesting shade in the distance of our landscape. 
Alas! what comes of it? Providence will not treat 
us thus — nay, with reverence be it spoken, cannot 
treat us thus; and so we fight and fret against His 
laws, and cease not from our mad, harassing delu- 



236 THOMAS CARLYLE. 

sion till Experience have beaten it out of us with 
many chastisements. 

" Most, indeed, never fully unlearn it all their days, 
but continue to the last to believe that in their lot 
in life they are unjustly treated, and cease not from 
foolish hopeS;.and still stand in new amazement that 
they should be disappointed — so very strangely, so 
unfairly! This class is certainly the most pitiable 
of all, for an Action of Damages against Providence 
is surely no promising lawsuit. 

"But I must descend from Life in general to Life 
in Edinburgh. In spite of ill-health, I reckon my- 
self moderately happy here, much happier than men 
usually are, or than such a fool as I deserves to be. 
My good wife exceeds all my hopes, and is in truth, 
I believe, among the best women that the world 
contains. The philosophy of the heart is far better 
than that of the understanding. She loves me with 
her whole soul, and this one sentiment has taught 
her much that I have long been vainly at the 
Schools to learn. Good Jane! She is sitting by 
me knitting you a purse: you must not cease to 
love her, for she deserves it, and few love you bet- 
ter. Of society, in this modern Athens, we have no 
want, but rather a superabundance, which, however, 
we are fast and successfully reducing down to the 
fit measure. True it is, one meets with many a 
Turk in grain among these people; but it is some 



tho:mas caelyle. 237 

comfort to know beforehand that Turks are, have 
been, and forever will be ; and to understand that 
from a Turk no Christian word or deed can ration- 
ally be expected. Let the people speak in the Turk- 
ish dialect, in Heaven's name ! It is their own, and 
they have no other. A better class of persons, too, 
are to be found here and there; a sober, discreet, 
logic -loving, moderately well-informed class: with 
these I talk and enjoy myself; but only talk as from 
an upper window to people on the street; into the 
house (of my spirit) I cannot admit them ; and the 
unwise wonderment they exhibit when I do but 
show them the lobby warns me to lose no time in 
again slamming to the door. But what of society? 
Round our own hearth is society enough, with a 
blessing. I read books, or like the Roman poet and 
so many British ones, ' disport on paper ;' and many 
a still evening when I stand in our little flower-gar- 
den (it is fully larger than two bedquilts), and smoke 
my pipe in peace, and look at the reflection of the 
distant city lamps, and hear the faint murmur of its 
tumult, I feel no little pleasure in the thought of 
^ my own four walls,' and what they hold. 

" On the whole, what I chiefly want is occupation ; 
which when 'the times grow better,' or my own 'gen- 
ius ' gets more alert and thorough-going, will not fail, 
I suppose, to present itself. Idle I am not altogeth- 
er, yet not occupied as I should be ; for to dig in 



238 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

the mines of Pliitus, and sell the gift of God (and 
such is every man's small fraction of intellectual tal- 
ent) for a piece of money is a measure I am not in- 
clined to ; and for invention^ for Art of any sort, I 
feel myself too helpless and undetermined. Some 
day — oh that the day were here! — I shall surely 
speak out these things that are lying in me, and 
giving me no sleep till they are spoken ! Or else 
if the Fates would be so kind as show me — that I 
had nothing to say ! This, perhaps, is the real secret 
of it, after all; a hard result, yet not intolerable, were 
it once clear and certain. Literature, it seems, is to 
be my trade ; but the present aspects of it among us 
seem to me peculiarly perplexed and uninviting. I 
love it not : in fact, I have almost quitted modern 
reading : lower down than the Restoration I rarely 
venture in English. These men, these Hookers, Ba- 
cons, Brownes, were men; but for our present *men 
of letters,' our dandy wits, our utilitarian philoso- 
phers, our novel, play, sonnet, and song manufactur- 
ers, I shall only say. May the Lord pity us and them ! 
But enough of this ! For what am I that I should 
censure ? Less than the least in Israel. 

" It is time that I devote a word or two to others, 
having spent the whole sheet on myself. You say 
nothing of your health: am I to consider you as 
recovered ? I dare scarcely believe it : yet perhaps 
you are recovering. Alas! sorrow has long been 



THOMAS CABLYLE. 239 

familiar to you ; and ill-health is but one of the 
many forms under which it too frequently pursues 
such beings from the cradle to the grave. But the 
heart, too, according to the old similitude, is some- 
times like a spicy flower, which yields not its sweet- 
est perfume till it be crushed. Of Charles's history 
at Cambridge I am sorry to hear, though it does not 
surprise me much, or in any wise diminish my faith 
in his character and capabilities. It shows only that, 
venerating Science, and this alone, he has formed 
too lofty an estimate of its Expositors and Institu- 
tions: he looked for Sages, such as are not to be 
found on this clay planet ; he meets with Drivellers, 
and his heart is too proud to yield their gowns and 
maces what it denies their minds. He is far too 
proud, poor fellow ; and that is a failing which he 
must and will lay aside. But what is to be done with 
him for the present ? At Cambridge, in his present 
mood, he must not continue ; in Edinburgh I durst 
not predict his fate: he might find the right road, or 
deviate farther from it than ever. Again and again I 
say, if I can be of any service, command me. And in 
the meanwhile fear not for your stormf ul, headstrong, 
high-minded boy. There is metal in him which no 
fire can utterly consume, and one way or other (with 
more or less suffering to himself, but with certainty, 
as I believe), it will be fused and purified, and the 
wayward youth will be a wise and generous man. 



24:0 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

" I have finished my sheet, and more I must deny 
myself at present. Will you get these tomes con- 
veyed to Badams, my own good Badams, whom I 
swear I had rather see than any ten men in Eng- 
land ? I have begged of him to write, but I know 
he will not : my good wishes are always with him. 
From you I expect better things, being minded to 
become a better correspondent myself. Will you 
make my kindest compliments to Mr. Montagu, 
and all your household, and believe me ever, my 
dear madam, 

" Your affectionate friend, 

" T. Cakltle." 

TO B.W. PEOCTEE, ESQ., 25 BEDFOED SQUAEE, LONDON. 
"Edinburgh, 21 Comlet Bank, VJth January, 1828. 

"My deae Sie, — I have long felt that I owed 
you a letter of the kindest thanks : yet now I am 
not intending to repay you, but rather to increase 
my debt by a new request of favors. The case is 
this : I am, since yesterday, a candidate for the Mor- 
al Philosophy Professorship in the University of St. 
Andrews, soon to be vacated by the transferrence of 
Dr. Chalmers to Edinburgh ; and thus my task for 
the present is to dun all such of my friends as have 
a literary reputation for Testimonials in my behalf. 
Considerable support in this way I can promise my- 
self, and, except in this way, I have no hope of any ; 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 241 

being altogether unconnected, as you know, either 
with Church or State, and, at all events, unfit for the 
dark ways of political intrigue, which too often, I 
am sorry to own, lead safeliest and soonest to such 
a goal as I am now aiming at. However, tlie St. 
Andrews Professors, the electors to this office, boast 
much that they have amended their ways ; and un- 
der terror of the late Eoyal Commission, who knows 
but the Melville interest may have ceased to be om- 
nipotent there. In this case I have some hope, in 
any other case little; but in all cases happily no 
great degree of fear. Meanwhile the business is| to 
try, and try with my whole might, since I have en- 
tered on the enterprise. Your friend Mr. Jeffrey is 
my Palinnrus, and forwards me with great hearti- 
ness: I may also reckon on the warm support of 
Wilson, Leslie, Brewster, and other men of mark in 
this city; and now I am writing to London for 
yours and Mr. Montagu's. If you and he, or you 
yourself, can with freedom speak any word in my 
favor, I cannot doubt that you will do it readily. 

" Perhaps you will tell me that you have no spe- 
cial judgment in matters philosophic, and think 
within yourself that any skill / may have possessed 
in this province must have been kept with extreme 
secrecy, during our acquaintance, in the recesses of 
my own consciousness. It were now too late to 
prove the error of these opinions, especially the lat- 

11 



242 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

ter ^ but I may observe, in refutation, that it is not 
skill in Philosophy alone, but general talent, and all 
sorts of literary gifts that come into play here ; in 
which case, who is better entitled to speak than 
* Barry Cornwall,' if so be his conscience will let 
him ? The Editor of Bacon will be another name of 
weight in a professional election: may I count on 
your laying this matter before him, and Mrs. Mon- 
tagu's friendly intervention in inciting him to act? 
I would have written to him in particular ; but why, 
thought I, two letters on one subject, and to one 
house? The rather that I am busy to a degree; 
for though the business may not be settled for many 
months, it is judged important by my friends that I 
should produce my documents without delay. Shall 
I hope, then, to ornament my little list with two 
other names ? To see you, an English Poet, beside 
a Scottish one and a German, for Goethe also is 
written to? I believe I shall. For the rest, I need 
give you no directions as to ih.Qform of your Testi- 
monial; this being altogether arbitrary, equally ef- 
fectual were it a Letter to me, or a Letter to the 
Principal and Professors of St. Andrews, or a general 
Testamur directed to all men at large. Edward Ir- 
ving, moreover, knows the whole matter, and can ex- 
plain it all if you have any difficulty, which, however, 
you will not have. And now enough of this poor 
business! only do not think me a sorner on your 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 243 

friendliness, and I will say no more about the matter. 
Speak for me also to Mr. Montagu, and explain to 
him why I have not spoken for myself. Do I not 
hereby give you a full jpower of attorney ; and for 
which you are to be paid — in wind-money, on tlie 
other side of the Border ! 

" What do I not owe you already for one of the 
kindest and most pleasant friends I ever had ! 
Francis Jeffrey is a man meant by Nature to be an 
intellectual Ariel, with a light etherealness of spirit 
which the weight of whole Courts of Session resting 
on it for quarter-centuries has not been able utterly 
to suppress. There is a glance in the eyes of the 
man which almost prompts you to take him in your 
arms. Alas that Mammon should be able to hire 
such servants, even though they continue to despise 
him! 

" And where are you, my Friend ? What is be- 
come of your seven-stringed shell that once gave 
such notes of melody ? Do you not reckon it a sin 
and a shame to bury that fine sense, that truly 
Artist -spirit, under a load of week-day business? 
Ought not your light to shine before men, in this 
season of dim eclipse, when the opaque genius of 
Utility is shedding disastrous twilight over half the 
nations ? I swear that I will never forgive you, if 
you keep silence long. My only ground of patience 
is that you are lentefestinans ; fusing richer ores in 



244 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

the hidden furnace, that they may be cast in fairer 
moulds of purer metal, and become shapes that will 
endure forever. Positively this is no idle talk, but 
the true wish and feeling of my heart, growing 
clearer to me and clearer the longer I know you. 
Remember my warning: it is your better genius 
that speaks through me. 

" Do you ever see Mr. Fraser ? and why lingers his 
Remew f The other day I met a little man, whose 
eyes sparkled with fire in speaking of it, and he 
wished to enlist me into his own corps on the other 
side : I answered that, like Dugald Dalgetty, I had 
taken bounty under the opposite flag, and so as a 
true soldado could not leave my colors ; under which, 
however, I reckoned myself bound to fight not him, 
or Gillies, or Cochrane, but the Devil (of Stupidity), 
and the Devil only. Seeing matters take this turn, 
the little man's eye grew soft, and he left me. 

" What is this periodical of Leigh Hunt's? and have 
you seen that wondrous Life of Byron ? Was it not 
a thousand pities Hunt had borrowed money of the 
man he was to disinhume and behead in the course 
of duty afterwards ? But for love or money I can- 
not see Hunt's book, or anything but extracts of it, 
and so must hold my tongue. Poor Hunt ! He has 
a strain of music in him too, but poverty and vanity 
have smote too rudely over the strings. To-day, too, 
I saw De Quincey : alas, poor Yorick ! But enough 



• THOMAS CAELYLE. 24.0 

of gossip also, in which I deh'ght more than I can 
own in writing. Mj wife sends her kind regards to 
you, and I believe would prize two stanzas of your 
making at no ordinary rate. Is Mrs. Procter well 
and safe f Alas ! it was, for all the world, such a 
night when I sat with you in Russell Street till the 
ghost-hour, and forgot that Time had shoes of felt. 
These times and places are all — away. Will Mrs. 
Montagu accept my thanks at this late date for her 
so kind and graceful letter ? Jane would have writ- 
ten, but was making silk pelisses and cloth pelisses, 
and had sempstresses, white and black, and only three 
days ago obtained entire dominion over Frost, and 
marched the needle-women out. 
"Adieu. I am ever yours, 

" T. Caelyle." 

TO MES. MONTAGU, 25 BEDFOED SQFAEE, LONDON". 

" Craigenputtoch, Dumfries, \^th Novemher, 1829. 

" My deae Madam, — After a long silence, or mere 
listening with indirect replies, I again address you, 
and on the humblest possible subject : a matter of 
business, relating entirely to myself. Why I trouble 
you in such a case, your helpfulness in past times 
and constant readiness to do me service will suffi- 
ciently explain. At the end of your last letter there 
occurs a little incidental notice of some opening for 
a medical man in Warwick, coupled with an advice 



246 THOMAS CAKLYLE. 

from Badams that it might be worth my brother's 
attention. Now it so chances that to my brother, at 
this season, this announcement is of all others the 
most interesting. The worthy Doctor has crammed 
himself with all manner of Scottish, English, and 
Continental Science in this department; and, ever 
since his return, has been straining his eyes to dis- 
cover some spot where he might turn it to some 
account for himself and others ; manifesting in the 
meanwhile not a little impatience that no such spot 
was to be found, but that Fate should inthrall free 
Physic, and condemn so bright a candle to burn alto- 
gether under a bushel. On our return from Edin- 
burgh I transmitted him your tidings, on which he 
wrote instantly to Badams for further information; 
wrote also to me that he thought the outlook highly 
promising ; and, in fine, this night, has ridden up 
hither, some five-and-thirty miles (from Scotsbrig) to 
take counsel with me on the subject, and lament that 
Badams has given him no answer. My petition, 
therefore, is that you would have the goodness to 
help the honest adventurer in this affair, and pro- 
cure for him, by such ways as lie open to you, what 
light can be had in regard to the actual, practical as- 
pect it presents. My own opinion is that a very 
little encouragement would bring the man to War- 
wick, for he is fond of England, and utterly wearied 
of idleness, as passiveness at his age may with little 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 247 

injustice be named. My devout prayer, too, has long 
been that he were settled somewhere, with anv ra- 
tional prospect ; for he has a real solidity, both of 
talent and character, as I judge, and wants nothing 
but Action to make him a very sufficient fellow. 
Do, pray, therefore, help the embryo Hippocrates a 
little, if you can ! He will wait here some eight 
days, in expectation of your writing, and perhaps also 
persuading Badams to write : nay, at any time I can 
forward the news to him into Annandale within a 
week of their arrival. "Write what you know with- 
out apprehension of consequences : honest Jack risks 
little by any such adventure, having little save a 
clear head and a stout honest heart, which are not so 
easily lost and won. For my own share, I, too, am 
getting fond of Warwick : it is in the heart of Old 
England, whither I should then have a pretext for 
coming ; nay, it is within a day's journey of London, 
where, among other wondrous things, there is * a 25 
Bedford Square.' 

" You are not to account this a Letter, but only a 
sort of commercial Message, a Man-of -Business Com- 
mission. * Do you know, Mr. ,' said John Wil- 
son once, in my hearing, to a noted writer to the 
Signet, proud enough of his Signet honors, ' there is 
nothins: in nature that I detest so much as a Man of 
Business.' He of the Signet had imagined himself 
high in the other's good graces, and now of a sud- 



248 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

den saw himself quite stranded, and left alone on tlie 
beach. 

"I am thinking to take the Correspondence witli 
you out of my wife's hands, so languidly does she 
manage it ; and of old times it was altogether mine. 
I know not that I have yet found, or shall ever find, 
any correspondent to replace you. 

" You will kindly remember me to Mr. Procter 
and his lady, in whose welfare I must always feel a 
friend's interest. This is not altogether ' words,' and 
yet what more can I make it ? 

" Assure Mr. Montagu that his book was the most 
delightful I have read for many days. Your hand 
also was often visible in it. Why does he not pub- 
lish more such ? I have got old Ascham, and read a 
little of him, when I have done work, every evening. 
Do you ever see Edward Irving ? He stretched him- 
self out here on the moors, under the free sky, for 
one day beside me, and was the same honest soul as 
of old. Badams will not write to me, I know, but 
some day I will see him and make him speak. 

" Believe me ever, my dear madam, 
" Your affectionate friend, 

"Thomas Carlyle." 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 249 



TO MES. MONTAGU, 25 BEDFORD SQUAEE, LONDON. 
"Craigenputtoch, 21th October, 1830. 

"My deak Feiend, — While I wait in tlie confi- 
dent though somewhat unaccountably deferred an- 
ticipation of a kind answer from you to a kind mes- 
sage, come tidings to my wife that such message is 
still only looked for ' through the portal of Hope ;' 
in plain prose, that my last letter has lost its way, did 
not reach, and now never will reach, you ! This is 
the more singular, as the like never happened in my 
past experience, and now, as indeed misfortune usu- 
ally does, comes doubly. Much about the time w^ien 
I wrote your letter, I despatched another to Weimar : 
and here on the same Wednesday night arrive, side 
by side, two announcements, from you and from 
Goethe, that both letters have miscarried ! Goethe's 
I have satisfactorily traced to the post-office, and 
liope there may have been some oblivion on the part 
of my venerable correspondent; neither is tliis, 
though less likely, in your case, a quite impossible 
supposition. At all events, true it is that, some two 
months ago I did actually write you a most densely 
filled letter, one which if it did me any justice must 
have been filled, moreover, with the friendliest sen- 
timents. I can still recollect of it that I entreated 
earnestly you would never forget me, would from 
time to time send me notice of your good or evil 

11-^ 



250 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

fortune, though I myself (for lack of historical inci- 
dent in these solitudes) were silent, assuring you, of 
what is still true, that Zwas nowise of the forgetting 
species, but blessed or burdened with one of your 
perennial memories, and a hard and stony heart, 
whereon truly only diamonds would write ; but the 
Love-charm and Think-of-me once written stood in- 
effaceable, defying all time and weather. Such state- 
ment, whereof I could make an affidavit were it 
needful, will be a light for you to explain several 
things ; above all, will absolve from the crime of in- 
difference and negligence, which crime towards you, 
at least, it wdll be forever impossible for me to fall 
into. Believe this, for it is morally and even phys- 
iologically true. 

" We hear with real sorrow of the domestic mis- 
chances that come upon you ; from which, in this 
world, no wisdom will secure us. 

"Happily the consciousness you mention is a bul- 
wark which keeps our inward citadel, or proper Self, 
unharmed, unimpregnable, whatever havoc there 
may be in the outworks. Let us study to maintain 
this, and let those others go their way, which, indeed, 
is natural for them. When I think of the miserable 
A. and of many like him, I could feel as if our old 
fathers who believed in witchcraft and Possession 
were nearer the truth than we. 

" It is strange how vice, like a poisonous ingredient 



THOMAS CAKLYLE. 251 

thrown into some fermenting mixture, will, in small 
beginnings, seize on the young heart, and proceed 
there, tainting, enlarging, till the whole soul, and 
all the universe it holds, is blackened, blasted, rent 
asunder with it, and the man that walked in the 
midst of us is clutched, as it were, by some unseen 
devil, and hurled into abysses of Despair and Mad- 
ness, which lie closer than we think on the path of 
every one. Let us hope (for this is the Place of 
Hope) that for himself reformation is still possible ; 
that, at least and worst, to the friends that cannot 
save liim, his future misdoings will be harmless. 

"Poor Hazlitt! He, too, is one of the victims to 
the Moloch Spirit of this Time — a Time when Self- 
ishness and Baseness, dizened out with rouge and 
a little theatrical frippery, has fearlessly seated her- 
self on high places, and preaches forth her Creed of 
Profit and Loss as the last Gospel for men ; when 
the thing tliat calls itself God's Church is a den of 
Unclean Beasts, from which the honest-hearted turns 
away with loathing ; when, between the Utilitarians 
and the Millenarians, and the dense dust and vapor 
they have raised up, the Temple of the Universe has 
become to the most invisible ; and the devout spirit 
that will not blind itself cannot worship, and knows 
not what or how to worship, and so wanders in aim- 
less pilgrimages, and lives without God in the world ! 
In Hazlitt, as in Byron and Burns and so many others 



252 THOMAS CAELYLE. 

in tlieir degree, there lay some tone of the ' eternal 
melodies,' which he could not fashion into terres- 
trial music, but which uttered itself only in harsh 
jarrings and inarticulate cries of pain. Poor Haz- 
litt ! There is one star less in the heavens, though 
a twinkling, dimmed one; while the street-lamps 
and horn lanterns are all burning, with their whale- 
oil or coal gas, as before ! These the street passen- 
ger and drayman and bearer of burden will prize and 
bless ; but in the lonely journeys and far voyages (of 
Thought) the traveller will miss the other. 

" I should give you some glimpse into our way of 
life here, but know not how in such compass to do 
it. A strange contrast it must be to yours. If Lon- 
don is the noisiest, busiest spot on the earth, this is 
about the stillest and most solitary. The road hither 
ends at our house : to see a lime-cart or market-cart 
struggling along the broken moor, till it reach gravel 
and wheel-ruts, and scent the Dominion of Commerce 
from afar, is an incident which, especially in winter, 
we almost mark in our journals. In this meek, pale 
sunshine of October, in this grave-like silence, there 
is something ghostly ; were it not that our meadows 
are of peat-bog and not of asphodel, and our hearts 
too full of earthly passions and cares, you might 
fancy it the abode of spirits, not of men and fleecy 
or hairy cattle. I have a rough broken path along 
the neighboring hill-side, two miles in length, where 



THOMAS CAELYLE. 253 

I take a walk (sometimes as I would take physic) 
and see over Ayrshire and Galloway, far and wide, 
nothing but granite mountains and idle moors ; save 
that here and there the cottage trees and smoke, with 
its patch of cornfield painfully won from the desert, 
indicate that man's two hands are there, who, like the 
cony, has built himself a nest in the rocks. On the 
whole, an original scene for studying in. Private as 
heart could wish ; and possessing in this one thought, 
that it positively is a scene, and dates since the day 
when Eternity became Time, and was created by 
God — the source, could one but draw from it, of 
innumerable, inexhaustibLe others. Here, truly, is 
the place for thinking, if you have any faculty that 
way. Since I came hither I have seen into various 
things. In my wife, too, I have the clearest, most 
Scotch-logical, yet the eagerest Disciple and Convert. 
For the rest, I read and write and smoke assiduously, 
as I was wont : one day I hope to give you one of 
the most surprising hooks you have met with lately. 
Am I happy ? My theory was and is that the man 
who cannot be happy (as happy as is needful) where- 
soever God's sky overspans him, and men forbear to 
beat him with bludgeons, deserves to be, and will 
always be, what one calls miserable. Nevertheless, 
we are coming to London, so soon as the yet clearly 
audible prohibition of Destiny is withdrawn. Will 
it be this winter ? Full glad were I too think so ; 



254: THOMAS CAELTLE» 

but there are sad shakings of the head. "We had tlie 
Jeffrej^s lately ; the Jeffrey a more interesting and - 
better man, a sadder and a wiser, than I had ever 
seen him. That he missed you was no oversight on 
his part, but ignorance that it would not be an intru- 
sion. 

" He looked to Mr. Procter, and Mr. Procter spake 
not. The like will not occur a second time. Such 
a visit here, of which we rejoice in one or two per- 
haps yearly, is a true ' Illumination with the finest 
Transparencies :' next night, indeed, comes our own 
still candle, and the past splendor is gone like a 
dream, but not the memory of it, nor the hope of 
its return. With Goethe I am more contented the 
longer I know him ; hard as adamant towards outer 
fortune, yet with the spirit of a prophet within, and 
the softest all-embracing heart. 

" He is to me the most venerable man now extant, 
surely the only literary man whom, amid all my 
respect, my admiration, I can view without a con- 
siderable admixture of contempt. He tells me yester- 
day to write soon, ' for days and weeks are growing 
more and more precious to him.' 

" God keep that day long distant ! I must add 
this other passage for the piece of news it brings. 
Take it in the original too. 

'"Ein talent voller junger Mann und glucJdicher 
JJebersetzer heschtiftigt sich mit Burns : ich bin dar- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 255 

auf sehr verlangend.'' ' A talented young man and 
successful Translator is busy with Burns : I am 
very curious for the issue.' You must thank Mr. 
Montagu for his book on laughter, which I have 
read with pleasure : the other book (of Extracts) my 
mother has borrowed, and eagerly begs to keep for 
a second and a third perusal : it is among the best 
books she ever saw, worthy whole cartloads of their 
new ware. For ^poetry (not mere rhyme and rant 
or else elegance), a Scotch reviewer is probably the 
blindest of created tilings; but in a Scotch peasant 
there is sometimes life, and a soul of God's making. 
My own impression is that Nature is still active, and 
that we are all alive did we but know it ! — God bless 
you. I am ever yours, T. Carlyle. 

" My brother speaks with warmest gratitude of 
your and Mr. Montagu's kindness. Such friends in 
such a course as his are indeed invaluable. I too 
am doubly your debtor for the maternal charge you 
take of my poor Doctor, whose posture in that wild 
chaos often fills me with misgivings. Will Mr. 
Procter, with his bright kind Lady, who is still 
strangely present with me, be pleased to know that 
I think of them «" 

THE END. 



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